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Mary Lavin in 1966. Photograph: Evelyn Hofer/Getty “I’ve seen it at Kilmallock,” says writer Kathleen MacMahon. ”It was amazing, really, because we were, in fact, in the middle of the fields.” The title story of a collection of Mary Lavin’s short stories, In the Middle of the Fields, has been adopted rather than adapted as a play which is to launch this year’s Fit-Up Festival in Ballydehob in July. A celebrated author herself, MacMahon is a granddaughter of Mary Lavin, and familiar with the house where the action of the story is set. This was Lavin’s home in Bective, Co Meath. “I knew it, the Abbey Farm, very well. It really did sit among the fields, within the trees, the river around it. It was built by Mary and her first husband William Walsh and I think the 100 acres of land was a wedding present from her father. The story captures that location, you get the feel of it from her words and now the wonderful thing is that it’s going back to Bective.” The other wonderful thing may be that it’s going back as part of this year’s Fit-Up Festival, which brings theatrical productions to rural towns or townlands around the country as if reviving the tradition of small touring companies travelling from place to place often with rudimentary sets and much-worn costuming. Very often too with equally worn actors, all of whom combined to fit up each venue to accommodate their performances. READ MORE Dublin Airport food: Where to go, where to avoid and what’s coming Can I put a bike or bin storage unit at the front of my house? Possibly their most famous forerunners would be the Players from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Lennox Robinson took a swing at it also with Drama at Inish, probably at much the same time as Anew McMaster with a troupe which included the young Harold Pinter made the fit-ups flare around Ireland to the long-lasting dismay of the Catholic hierarchy. Kathy Rose O’Brien and Mark O’Regan in In the Middle of the Fields, stage version of short story by […]
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Reading Time: 1 Min. Fantasy and science fiction readers are naturally open to the unexpected, and they like new takes
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