Date Published: 20-Apr-2011

Deirdre Kinahan’s explosive drama, Moment, which explores how one awful moment can change a family’s life forever, will visit the Town Hall Theatre from April 26-30 as part of an Irish tour following its sell-out run at London’s Bush theatre, when it was widely praised by critics and audiences alike.

Moment’s cast includes Spiddal actress Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, who appeared in this gripping play when it was first staged 16 months’ ago at Navan’s Solstice Arts Centre followed by a short run in Dublin’s Project.

The response to its initial run in Ireland was muted and matters might have ended there, except that UK producers who saw it in Dublin – thanks to the support of arts group, Culture Ireland – brought it to the Bush.

Moment got a phenomenal reception in London, with a series of four star reviews in the national press and unanimous praise for its eight actors.

The Guardian’s critic Michael Billington praised “Kinahan’s ability to show how the present is contaminated by the past”, while Charles Spencer in The Telegraph said the “play comes over like a shattering Greek tragedy, served up with cups of tea and slices of quiche”.

The story of Moment begins on a seemingly ordinary evening when an Irish family sit down to tea. But it shortly becomes clear that this is no normal evening.

The son of the house, Nial (Ronan Leahy) who committed a terrible crime many years earlier, has come home to visit. Nial has some news to share and a conscience to clear. But while he has rebuilt his life, following counselling and rehabilitation in prison, his mother and sisters have not been so fortunate and still bear the scars of his crime 15 years on.

Deirdre Kinahan was inspired to write Moment in the wake of several high profile Irish manslaughter cases, most notably the killing of Robert Holohan by Wayne O’Donoghue in Cork in 2005 and Patrick O’Dwyer, who killed his sister Marguerite in Clare in 2004.

Kate and Maeve Fitzgerald play Nial’s two sisters, Ciara and Niamh, both of whom have reacted differently to their brother’s actions.

Kate plays Ciara, the “calmer, settled one”, who was eight when Nial killed someone. That someone was a friend of their sister, Niamh and, for obvious reasons, the killing had a more visible impact on her,

Both Niamh and Ciara went into survival mode after the tragic event, while their mother fell apart. Ciara ended up looking after both her mother and older sister and grew up overnight, becoming an over achiever, getting away, and marrying at a young age. The play shows how people have different coping mechanisms, observes Kate.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.