Sean Walsh

There was this shrine, as I recall. Oh, well known it was, locally… We walked the three miles, there and back. Out the country. ‘Summer’s day… Me still in short trousers, ‘boots that needed mending. Six miles in all. A killer…   ‘Knelt for the Rosary. Nudging, gawking around, stifling a giggle… Every bead a penance… ‘Grass trodden underfoot by...

May 1980. A phone call from Tom Walsh, my nephew, to say my mother was poorly and would I like to share the journey with him to Ennis to visit her. Oh yes, of course! He planned to leave Balbriggan, his domicile north of Dublin, on the morrow and would pick me up in Dublin at a specified time and...

Back row, centre aisle.   A tangible stillness in an almost empty Church… Elders moving slowly – genuflecting, kneeling, standing – making their way to Calvary, treading their very own, plaster statued, Via Dolorosa…   Re-living the Greatest Story Ever Told in reparation for their own sins and the sins of the whole world.     Jesus is condemned… the...

I climb the stairs to the attic – ‘clear day – moonlit night – to an empty room full of Might Have Been… ‘Cross the floor to a slanting ceiling, lever open the Velox window, look out across Joycean rooftops towards Dublin Bay and London… so far away…        

I doubt you will come across an angle on the story of Jesus’ passion and death which even remotely reflects what is to be found in this play. It is truly sui generis, one of a kind.