This first collection by Frank McGuinness contains plays from the 1980s, including his major work of that decade, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, a powerful and profoundly moving study of a group of Ulster Protestant volunteers in the Great War. The book also contains Carthaginians, set in a Derry graveyard in the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday killings, Innocence, McGuinness's vigorous drama based on the life of Ca...

This second collection of Frank McGuinness contains his beautifully lyrical plays from 1989 to 1999. The Bird Sanctuary is published here for the first time. The collection also includes Mary and Lizzie, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, and is introduced by the author.Mary and Lizzie'An extraordinary, outlandish script . . . Intriguing and sharply irreverent.' Time OutSomeone ...

his cheekbones so beautiful I have to close my eyes in case he blinds meA young man relives the youth he spent in 'a refuge for wayward boys'. In his memories, the forces of faith, power and money dominate this starkly unsettling institution, where not everything is as it seems. The boys call it Gomorrah.Gomorrah is a mirror to the contradictions of 1970s Ulster, a place where violence, control and desire meet. Now, years later, the man must make peace with his pas...

Now we have a family, a rivalry, a purpose.A writer and his wife sit together in their garden. They are surrounded by a lifetime's work; their home, their gardens and their children. Rachel wants to be congratulated on her pregnancy, Maurice is struggling for his father's acceptance and Charlie needs his sacrifices to be acknowledged. A crisis has drawn this family together but their honesty may pull them apart.The Hanging Gardens by Frank McGuinness premi...

The year is 1904 in the city of Dublin. Gretta and Gabriel Conroy attend the Morkan Sisters annual dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany and the last day of Christmas. An evening of laughter, music and dance ends in an epiphany for Gabriel.Recognised as a masterpiece, The Dead, the short story from James Joyce's Dubliners, is dramatised by Frank McGuinness. The play premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in December 2012.

A son tries to mourn the death of the father who abandoned him. A family rages against the murder of their gay son in war-torn Raqqa. Brilliance turns to madness in the fickle and unforgiving world of theatre. And in the titular story, the world of an operatic tenor violently collides with that of a homeless couple on the streets of New York.In the first collection of stories by Frank McGuinness, this award-winning master storyteller writes above all about freedom: freedom to love,...

My son betrayed me. It is a family tradition.Didn't I do the same to my father?The World War intensifies in Europe. In Zurich a writer breathes his last imagining his life till now from his childhood in Dublin.The voices of his family circling him – wife, son, daughter – carry him to his end as he hears each separate chapter chronicling the power of their passion for their famous father, their love, their hate, their need, their sorrows and joys, th...

'This powerful and subtle play . . . follows the experience of eight men who volunteer to serve in the 36th (Ulster) Division at the beginning of the First World War. It reaches a climax at the start of the terrible battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916, the actual anniversary of the battle of the Boyne in 1690. The Somme, where the Ulster Division suffered heavy casualties, has, like the Boyne, come to have a sacred place in the Loyalist Protestant mind. It marks the Union sealed with blood...

And she grew to be a girl, my daughter. Sing a song, Mary. Sing for grandma and Granda. Sing.The ties that bind can never be broken. For Sal, they hang like a noose around her neck, just loose enough to keep a small but potent flame burning inside.A passionate story of love and hate, The Match Box by Frank McGuinness premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in June 2012.

But I can hear them speaking like magpies,And they mean to thieve his life,The Lord's anointed servant,They mean to kill God.Speaking Like Magpies, specially commissioned by the RSC as part of the Gunpowder Season to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, brings to vibrant life the background to this notorious event in British history.Frank McGuinness' play premiered at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in September 200...

An Englishman, an Irishman and an American are locked up together in a cell in the Middle East. As victims of political action, powerless to initiate change, what can they do? How do they live and survive?Frank McGuinness explores the daily crisis endured by hostages whose strength comes from communication, both subtle and mundane, from humour, wit and faith.Someone Who'll Watch Over Me premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in 1992 before transferring to the ...

Conrad and Gabriel are lovers but when Alma arrives to tend the sick Gabriel, their lives are unpicked and remade. Frank McGuinness's powerful, subtle and funny play explores the territory where boundaries of love, devotion and hate coalesce.Gates of Gold premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2002.