Cover

Landing Page

Sebastian Barry

The Pride of Parnell Street

Dedication

For Catriona Crowe

Contents

1. Title Page
2. Dedication
3. Characters
4. The Pride of Parnell Street
5. About the Author
6. By the Same Author
7. Copyright

Characters

Janet

Joe

THE PRIDE OF PARNELL STREET

September 1999. Janet is a Dublin woman of about thirty-three years of age. She wears the day clothes of a normal inner-city person: jeans and maybe a hooded jacket. She sits on a nondescript chair downstage left.

In the shadows to the right, lies her husband, Joe, on a bed – might be a hospital bed. He’s a good-looking man, some years older than Janet, but with his close-cut hair he looks rough enough. He has a thin gold chain around his neck. He’s very thin.

Their accent is the Dublin accent of the area around Parnell Street, north of the Liffey.

There might be a suggestion in the stage design of a number of things, the old ESB power station in Ringsend, maybe the old water conduit that used to pour out of it that Joe wanted to clean himself in, or other places of the play.

There can be bits of music, Thin Lizzy and other bands and songs mentioned in the play, where needed – maybe inside speeches, and certainly between, wherever is thought useful. The actors might stay where they are, or move about, as instincts dictate. Even Joe might want to get out of bed for certain very active speeches, and get back in again and resume his illness. The lighting should be helpful to the actors, and not necessarily naturalistic. There might be certain effects, of Dublin sunlight and so on, not necessarily where they are mentioned, but echoing things said, as comfort, or warning. It is not a naturalistic space, except in the last scene perhaps. It is all the places they have been and know, and describe, just as they embody all their ages and deeds. Whether they are aware of each other before the last scene is up to the actors’ instincts.

Light up clearly on Janet, who at last raises her eyes and looks straight out, with her fearless nature evident. She fingers the gold band of her wedding ring.

Janet   In them days – in them days, long long ago, it seems like, when we was girls only really ourselves – sounds like some storybook, but. Me, I’d had the three boys already, Billy, Jack and little Macker. I was sixteen years old when I had Billy. Then the other two, on the trot, really. Yeh, and I was hoping for a little girl, you know, the way you do, but we thought we’d better call a truce at three, me and their da. Big Macker was their da, me husband, but I called him Joe, because that was his real name. It was his ould mother called him Macker, you know?