Fifty years after it has won its independence Ireland is on its knees. The government is hanging by a thread, the Taoiseach is working from home, the Minister for Finance returns from Switzerland empty handed and, after he’s gone missing, the Minister for External Affairs appears with a scheme that will save the country. He has secured the commitment of a Texan businessman to purchase tracts of the West of Ireland to be sold as the final resting place for sentimental Irish people living abroad.
The modest proposal of Brian Friel’s hilarious and scathing satire prompts wheeling, dealing and double dealing as control succumbs to corruption. The salvation of Ireland is immediately beset by hunger for personal profit. The Mundy Scheme, a long suppressed drama and a precursor of The Communication Cord, is too readily recognizable more than forty years after its first production.
A savage, albeit uproarious satire on Irish politics with a good many well-aimed whacks at Americans. — The Critic
To read the play in post-bailout Ireland is to be aware of how prescient a writer Friel has always been: he showed more than forty years ago how precariously our sovereignty was poised, and how easily it could be undermined by political mendacity, parochialism and excessive dependence upon multinational investment. It seems, in other words, like a play whose day has come again. — Patrick Lonergan, Dublin Review of Books
Additional information
| Weight | 220 g |
|---|---|
| Choose Type | Hardback, Paperback |
Book Information
Publication date: 31 May 2022
Details: 88pp
ISBN PBK: 978 1 85235 561 6
ISBN HBK: 978 1 85235 562 3
Cover: ‘Portrait of Brian Friel’ (1981) by Basil Blackshaw
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