Rory and the Devil

I wrote Rory and the Devil to explore my Irish heritage and what it means to return to a family you’ve never met. Full of storytelling, romance, and mysteries to be solved, this play feels like a great night out in a rural pub in Donegal in 1978.

The assassination of Lord Lifford, a tyrannical British landlord, along a country road in Donegal in 1878 remains one of Ireland’s great unsolved mysteries… Nearly a century later during the height of The Troubles, in a rural pub on the border of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Mary Friel, a barmaid, strives to maintain harmony amongst the men in her life. When her secret British lover unexpectedly arrives he is interrupted by another stranger, an American cousin looking for insight into his family history. Ancestral legends are revisited and a cycle of violence is revealed.   Can they overcome their history, or will the cycle continue?