Ballyshannon Drama Society present Margaret, their festival play for 2024 which has qualified for both the Ulster Finals and All Ireland Finals in Athlone.
Margaret is in her 80s. At times she is her old self, sharp, lucid, clear; other times confused, frightened and frustrated. She talks to an imagined Denis, to herself, to the audience.
Margaret is a new play by Donegal playwright Shaun Byrne, a follow up to the recent highly successful Bloody Sunday themed An Incident with Dave Cotter and last year’s Darkness Echoing.
With Rachel O Connor as Margaret Thatcher, three times British Prime Minister, and Shaun Byrne as the ghost of husband Denis, it is directed by Monica Doherty. The play joins her in the last days of her life in the Ritz Hotel suffering from dementia and explores her troubled relationships: with the Irish, the miners, her children, the public, her male colleagues and the fallout from The Falklands War; as past demons, guilts and successes return to torment, flatter and deceive her.
‘You have no enemies you say? If you have none
Then small is the work that you have done.’
