OVERVIEW

• Playwright

  Dorothy Macardle 

• Setting

  Dublin - the Parlour of a house on Wood Quay. Time: the night of May 26th-27th, 1848.

• Notes

  According to Cathy Leeney (' Irish Women Playwrights, 1900-1939': Peter Lang, 2010), the original manuscript for 'The Old Man' has never been found. The same is true of many of Macardle's plays, possibly, as Leeney suggests, because her personal papers were destroyed by her younger brother after her death in 1958.

• Synopsis

  A two-act play set on the eve of the deportation of Young Irelander and failed rebel leader John Mitchel to to Australia. When three firebrand youths attempt to stage a last minute rescue and spark another insurrection, the elderly grandfather of one of them, himself a former idealist and a veteran of Robert Emmet's disastrous rising in 1803, attempts to use his widom and experience to reason them out of it. The play draws attention to the inevitable conflict of idealism and pragmatism at the heart of the Irish nationalist movement.

• Play Type

  Plays General
  

  Number Of Acts

  Full-Length

• Cast Size Male

  13

• Cast Size Female

  1

Original Production

• Date of First Production

  24 February 1925

• Producer

  Produced by Abbey Theatre/Amharclann na Mainistreach

• Original Venue

  Abbey Theatre/Amharclann na Mainistreach
  

Source Of Information