Woman & Scarecrow

Directed by Geoff Gould
Starring Joan Sheehy, Noelle Brown, Geraldine Plunkett, Mark O'Regan

In a simple room, in a haze of morphine, crumpled sheets and regret, a dying woman looks back over her life. It is never easy becoming the past tense and, in this play by renowned Irish writer Marina Carr, the struggle between life and death is an epic one. Yet the play, crammed with wild laughter and dense with unshed tears, is not so much about dying as about how to live. “It is easy to be happy”, suggests the woman, “it is a decision. Like going to the dentist”. Like all Carr's work, Woman & Scarecrow is laden with poetry and has flashes of romanticism, but here the tendency towards the lyrical is tempered with a robust humour that ensures the evening never becomes mawkish.

Image : photo ©Bernadette O'Shea