The Civic are delighted to host a major revival of Marina Carr’s award winning breakthrough play, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, 2018.
The Mai is an epic tale of three generations of a family inspired by love but shattered by inescapable reality. It is both wildly funny and humorously tragic.
The play centres on a formidable forty-year-old woman, a teacher known as The Mai, whose husband Robert, a musician, has always felt stifled by her ideals of perfection. After seventeen years he leaves her, whereupon she sets about decorating a dream house in the hope that he will one day return to her. From her fairytale castle set in the midlands, on the banks of the legendary Owl Lake, The Mai waits by the window for him to return. The play opens in this world on the day of Robert’s return after an absence of four years.
Throughout Mai’s and Robert’s troubled reunion appear the memorable characters that comprise the three generations of her family. These are her two sisters meddling in the affairs of her three daughters with comical tenacity while towering above them all is the irreverent matriarch, Grandma Fraochlan, who presides over all with her “ancient and fantastical memory”, reminding them that the past is looming over the present.
Written by Marina Carr
Cast: Lesley Conroy, Derbhle Crotty, Maeve Fitzgerald, Stella McCusker, Rachel O’Byrne, Marion O’Dwyer, Aidan Redmond and Joan Sheehy
Festival Deal Tickets Buy The Mai AND Rathmines Road and get tickets for €18 each. Select full price tickets and discount applied at checkout.
As part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2018
Presented by Decadent Theatre Company in association with the Civic and Dublin Theatre Festival
The Civic Sessions
27th September post-show with director Andrew Flynn and members of the company
