First Bus to Ballinabeg

About

Take one gender-fluid young man, a funeral, a coffin, some colourful characters, set it in a remote Irish village, add plenty of humour and you have the winner of the Stables new playwriting competition 2021.

A black comedy set in the far West of Ireland in around 2000, this story involves lost loves and the darker side of Ireland's recent history, all revolving around a family member returning for a funeral. This is Finian, who ran away from his violently abusive father, spent time in America and now lives in Dublin as a happily gender-fluid individual. Finn regards himself as a man who sometimes dresses and behaves as a woman, and this is one of those times. So his return raises hackles among some of the community as well a mixture of memories for his siblings, the adoring younger sister May and the elder sister Bride now flirting with a religious life. Meanwhile, the universally loathed father still manages to disrupt his own funeral, causing almost as much chaos dead, as he did when alive. A black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless!