On 1 July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in one of the bloodiest battles in human history, the Battle of the Somme. This enduring war play is a powerful portrayal of mortality, love and loss. In the extraordinary circumstances of World War I, eight ordinary men arechanged, changed utterly. In 2016, one hundred years after the battle, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness was revived in a co-production between Abbey Theatre, Citizens Theatre, Headlong and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse. This edition contains a new introduction by P. J. Mathews. 'There is a touch of genius in McGuinness's, sensitive, often bleakly comic exploration of the men's situation.' Daily Telegraph 'This is an epic drama that demands recognition for the male human animal in all his complexity, across any boundaries of belief or belonging we care to construct.' The Scotsman

Locked into a bloody cycle of murder and reprisal, Electra, haunted by her father's assassination, is consumed by grief and a thirst for vengeance. When her brother Orestes at last returns, she urges him to a savage and terrifying conclusion. Frank McGuinness's charged adaptation of Sophocles' powerful tragedy was first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1997 and was revived at the Old Vic, London, in 2014.

In the summer of 1967 Greta Garbo comes to Donegal. Ireland is on the verge of violent change. Two couples are on the verge of parting. A woman tries to save her family, while a girl tries to save her future. Seemingly above it all is the loveliest and loneliest of all women, the great Garbo. But when the gods arrive, they can cause havoc, not least to themselves, as the divine Greta is to learn. Frank McGuinness's Greta Garbo Came to Donegal premiered at the Tricycle Theatre, London, in January, 2010.

The Sophoclean classic: When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War with his new concubine, Cassandra, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnons cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills them. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified, since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her young, twin brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.

Two poets, a playwright and a novelist - Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Frank McGuiness and Anita Desai - explore in these essays aspects of the imaginative process as each has experienced it: four major writers, four sensibilities, four ways of seeing creativity and its contexts. MICHAEL LONGLEY writes with remarkable candour of his years - 1970 to 1991 - as arts administrator in Northern Ireland. Transforming anecdote into parable, this noted poet measures the cost of 'trying to remain true to yourself facing the "dark tower"' while being part of an essential but often soul-destroying bureaucracy. EAVAN BOLAND, merging the personal and the theoretical, contends that the place of women as writers in Irish society have been shaped by a ' fusion of the national and the feminine'. FRANK MCGUINESS, the internationally acclaimed playwright, offers a radically innovative reading of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, while calling into being the material contexts of creativity - in this instance, a prison cell. The Indian novelist ANITA DESAI looks at her country's colonial heritage and a shared background that gave rise to the work of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the film-maker Satyajit Ray. Her fascinating lecture shows how a vibrant indigenous culture, coming into fruitful contact with the West at the end of the nineteenth century, blossomed into artistic creation - yielding parallels with Ireland.

Drama / 3m, 2f / Interior Written by acclaimed Irish author Frank McGuinness, whose Someone Who'll Watch Over Me earned a Tony(R) Award nomination, Gates of Gold is an acerbic duel between two lovers, the fashionable and eloquent theatrical trailblazers who founded Dublin's Gate Theatre. Gates of Gold is witty and moving - a vibrant celebration of art, love, and finally, life itself. "Compelling! This endearing love letter of a play!" -The New York Times "Moving! Provocative! Compelling performances!" -New York Post

The year is 1904 in the city of Dublin. Gretta and Gabriel Conroy attend the Morkan Sisters annual dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany and the last day of Christmas. An evening of laughter, music and dance ends in an epiphany for Gabriel. Recognised as a masterpiece, The Dead, the short story from James Joyce's Dubliners, is dramatised by Frank McGuinness. The play premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in December 2012.

And she grew to be a girl, my daughter. Sing a song, Mary. Sing for grandma and Granda. Sing. The ties that bind can never be broken. For Sal, they hang like a noose around her neck, just loose enough to keep a small but potent flame burning inside. A passionate story of love and hate, The Match Box by Frank McGuinness premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in June 2012.

Now we have a family, a rivalry, a purpose. A writer and his wife sit together in their garden. They are surrounded by a lifetime's work; their home, their gardens and their children. Rachel wants to be congratulated on her pregnancy, Maurice is struggling for his father's acceptance and Charlie needs his sacrifices to be acknowledged. A crisis has drawn this family together but their honesty may pull them apart. The Hanging Gardens by Frank McGuinness premiered at the Abbey Theatre in October 2013 as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Seven years have passed since the end of the Trojan War and Menelaus, King of Sparta and husband to Helen, is making his slow and painful way home. When his ship is wrecked on the coast of Egypt he stumbles upon what seems to be his wife lingering outside the royal palace. But if this is the real Helen, who was the beautiful woman stolen by Paris, for whom all Greece took up arms? Did Troy fall for nothing? Has it all been some god's idea of a joke? Frank McGuinness's version of Euripides' Helen premiered at Shakespeare's Globe, London, in August, 2009.

You used to swing me on our garden gate. In and out, in and out - out and in, me, on top of the gate, safe because I was in your arms, my father's big strong arms. Recalling events that may or may not have happened, people he may or may not have known, an elderly father weaves his life, funny, angry, poignant, as if in a dream.His daughter, perched outside his window, as close as the pandemic allows, responds with conflicting memories. They sing and argue, they broach dangerous ground, their profound love apparent despite themselves, until the visiting hour is up. Written during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, Frank McGuinness's The Visiting Hour premiered in April 2021 at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in the first online Gate At Home production.

The King is missing, presumed dead. His warrior son is braced for inheritance but is betrayed by his heart. Phaedra, the tormented Queen, has a terrifying secret that will shake Athens to its core. Based on Euripides' Hippolytus, Racine's Phaedra reveals the devastating potential of love and the brutality of human nature. Phaedra, in this new version by Frank McGuinness, premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in April 2006.

Children, lead this old woman outside. A slave like the rest of you, She once was your queen. Troy has fallen to the Greeks, and Hecuba, its beloved queen, is widowed and enslaved. She mourns her great city and the death of her husband, but when fresh horrors emerge, her grief turns to rage and a lust for revenge. A savage indictment of the devastation of war, Hecuba is brought to life in this thrillingly visceral new version. Hecuba premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London in September 2004.

Conrad and Gabriel are lovers but when Alma arrives to tend the sick Gabriel, their lives are unpicked and remade. Frank McGuinness's powerful, subtle and funny play explores the territory where boundaries of love, devotion and hate coalesce. Gates of Gold premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2002.

Set in Buncrana, County Donegal, Ireland, during World War II, Dolly West's Kitchen is centered on a family struggling to come to terms not only with the effects of war on their country and their family but also with their own inability to respond to one another as situations—and they themselves—change. As the characters talk of love, sex, war, the English, de Valera, and the Yanks, Dolly West's Kitchen becomes a deeply moving evocation of the fantasy and the reality that was Ireland in the 1940s, filled with the richness of character and sense of place that have always marked Frank McGuinness's writing.

Frank McGuinness presents scintillating new versions of two of August Strindberg's plays.

Miss Julie is Strindberg's examination of power, sex, and class, set on a midsummer's eve in a nobleman's house and focusing on the shifting relationship between Miss Julie, the daughter of the house, and Jean, her father's manservant.

The Stronger is a short play that explores the complex range of emotions felt by Madame X when she encounters Mademoiselle Y, her husband's former mistress, at a fashionable café. Calling Mademoiselle Y worn out and evil, Madame X says that the triumph of her marriage proves she is the stronger of the two—even though these words ring hollow, as she attempts to deceive only herself.

The McKenna family convenes at their remote West Ireland holiday home to mark the 21st birthday of their late son Gene. Eccentric cousin Bridget appears along the causeway, inviting herself for birthday cake and conversation, and ready to expose a family secret. Even Margaret, the unstoppable mother, and Leo, the ever-calm father, can't hold things together in the face of an unexpected visit from the past. There Came a Gypsy Riding premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in January 2007.

Emily Watson stars as a grieving mother in this emotional drama adaptation. Based on the memoirs of Bristol priest Julie Nicholson (Watson), whose daughter Jenny (Nicola Wren) died in the terrorist attack on London on July 7th 2005, the drama follows the grief-stricken mother as she tries to overcome the heartbreaking loss and piece together the truth about her daughter's final moments.

God is on fire - his fever is plague. All that was sweet is spilt and gone. The people of Thebes look to Oedipus to lift a terrible curse from them and their city. He consults the oracle and learns that he must root out the late king's murderer. But his relentless interrogation of one man after another leads inexorably, and in the space of a single day, to his own savage conclusion. You are who you are seeking to find. Frank McGuinness's version of Sophocles' Oedipus premiered at the National Theatre, London, in October 2008.

Set in 16th-century Ireland, this mystical play explores England and Ireland and the background to colonial rule. Its characters include Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare, and it is grounded in Shakespeare's plays, but nevertheless has at its core harsh political realities.

2016 marks the centenary of the Easter Rising, known as "the poets' rebellion", for among their leaders were university scholars of English, history and Irish. The ill-fated revolt lasted six days and ended ignominiously with the rebels rounded up and their leaders sentenced to death. The signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic must have known that the Rising would be crushed, must have dreaded the carnage and death, must have foreseen that, if caught alive, they would themselves be executed. Between 3 and 12 May 1916, the seven signatories were among those executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. Now 100 years later, eight of Ireland's finest writers remember these revolutionaries in a unique theatre performance. The forgotten figure of Elizabeth O'Farrell - the nurse who delivered the rebels' surrender to the British - is also given a voice. Signatories comprises the artistic responses of Emma Donoghue, Thomas Kilroy, Hugo Hamilton, Frank McGuinness, Rachel Fehily, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Marina Carr and Joseph O'Connor to the seven signatories and Nurse O'Farrell.They portray the emotional struggle in this ground-breaking theatrical and literary commemoration of Ireland's turbulent past. A performance introduction on the staging of the play is given by Director Patrick Mason, and an introduction by Lucy Collins, School of English, Drama and Film, UCD, sets the historical context of the play.

Nora Helmer, wife to Torvald and mother of three children, appears to enjoy living the life of a pampered, indulged child. But as her economic dependence becomes brutally clear, Nora's acceptance of the status quo undergoes a profound change. To the horror of the bewildered Torvald, himself caught in the tight web of a conservative society which demands that he exert strict control, Nora comes to see that only possible true course of action is to leave the family home.

Frank McGuinness's version of A Doll's House received its London premiere in October 1996 and opened on Broadway in 1997, where the production won four Tony Awards.

A collection of Frank McGuinness plays from the 1980s.

Obsessed with his own salvation, the hermit Paulo dedicates himself to ten years of prayerful penance. When his faith wavers, the ever-watchful Devil seizes the moment to convince him that he shares the fate of one Enrico, a notorious Neapolitan gangster destined for damnation. Swearing vengeance, Paulo lashes out against God and assembles a band of rival outlaws. I'll match Enrico in mad badness. So, we're damned, both of us, are we? Then I'll be revenged on the whole world. And yet, even as their villainous crimes escalate, the possibility of redemption hovers over the two men, perhaps within reach. A fast-paced adventure story embracing bandits and beautiful women between glimpses of heaven and hell, this subversive and at times riotous exploration of faith and the transformative power of love races across the Italian landscape, relishing the unpredictability of fate, an extraordinary array of characters and their very real dilemmas. Sinner I am - pray for me. Damned by Despair, written in 1635 by the great Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina, is brought to vivid life in Frank McGuinness's new version, whichopens at the National Theatre, London, in October 2012.

I am honoured to meet you. You are, as they say, a man after my own heart. And you have lifted mine. My heart, that is. Two men, together, on the edge of heaven. In a strange restaurant, two American giants who revere each other, Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot, meet for dinner. Both in their own ways great defiant spirits, they create magic and anarchy, revealing secrets and sorrows. The evening is presided over by the Proprietor, who seems to control the workings of the universe. Or perhaps not. All is revealed, or nearly so. A fast-paced fictional dinner date like no other, Frank McGuinness's Dinner With Groucho was first produced by b*spoke theatre company at The Civic, Dublin, in September 2022.