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Jack Healy in ‘The Great Hunger’ at Ballyvolane House.

Cork based theatre company, Theatre Makers Ltd., in association with Ballyvolane House, presents Patrick Kavanagh’s epic poem ‘The Great Hunger’ in a performance by Jack Healy in Ballyvolane House on Saturday, November 16 at 8pm. 'The Great Hunger' is directed by Ger FitzGibbon with design by Ronan Fitzgibbon

First published in 1942, this epic poem deals with the trials and tribulations of its central protagonist; Patrick Maguire, a small farmer in post-treaty Ireland. Maguire fails to seize day after passing day as he watches in despair his life edge closer and closer to an unconsummated conclusion.

On his ‘headland of carrots and cabbage’ he dreams of an idyll of marriage and children and yet boasts to his friends of his mastery in avoiding every ‘net spread in the gap of experience’. His life is an endless cycle of feeding the hens, boiling the kettle, lighting the fire and giving the cows their hay, with only the monotonous certainty of Sunday Mass or the meagre offerings of the crossroads to look forward to, by way of social life. And yet sometimes when he is on the land, he has the most profound, life-giving experience of the spiritual in nature. Kavanagh masterfully mediates all of this - Patrick Maguire and his world - through a beautiful tapestry of words and images.

This is Jack Healy’s second one-man-show. He performed his own piece; Shostakovich - based on the life of the Soviet composer - as part of Cork Midsummer Festival in 2009 and more recently at the Southbank Centre London as part of “The Rest is Noise Festival. Artistic Director of Theatre Makers Ltd., Jack is a Cork based actor and playwright who has written extensively and worked as an actor with other Cork based companies, Corcadorca, Graffiti and Meridian

Ger FitzGibbon is former head of Drama and Theatre Studies at UCC. Most recently he was consultant director of Becket’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ and co-director of Frank McGuiness’ ‘Mary and Lizzie’, both at the Granary Theatre Cork.

Ballyvolane House, Castlelyons is a historic Irish country house of extraordinary warmth, style and comfort that provides luxury accommodation, excellent cuisine and salmon fishing on the river Blackwater. Booking on 025-36349 or email info@ballyvolanehouse.ie. Tickets €15. Show with dinner €47.50 at 6.30pm.

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