"An Explosion by the Ballyseedy Woods"
an intense drama set in the years immediately following the Irish Civil War of 1922-1923.
"Ballyseedy Woods" is the third play in their trilogy of the fight for independence from Great Britain, after "The Rising" in 2023 and "The Anglo-Irish War for Independence" in 2024.
In the wake of the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s, Barrister Costello spends long days at Griffith’s Barracks in Dublin, reviewing Military Service Pension applications for an endless line of desperate survivors and their families whose lives have been forever altered by the devastation of that conflict.
His deeply ingrained sense of national duty and the severe limitations of the pension requirements lead him to clash at every turn with Mrs. DunCannon, his secretary, who cannot or will not tame her impassioned advocacy for the widows, disabled veterans, and their starving children who come seeking their mercy.
An ever more weary Costello closes each day with tea and stew at nearby Madigan’s Pub in the Four Corners of Hell district, frequented by hardened men with stinging battle scars and their own crosses in need of drowning with endless pints of Guinness.
When a young American tourist stumbles into the pub and begins questioning the causes and outcomes of the recent War, long-suppressed memories are awakened, blood begins to rise, tempers erupt, and each man is forced to confront his role in that conflict’s unimaginable atrocities.
The play will be performed March 13-16
at The Charles A. Brown Ice House in Bethlehem, PA.