Malachy McKenna The Quiet Land

(5 stars; 1 reviews)

Drama on One: The Quiet Land RTÉ Radio 1 - 05 JUN 2014  By Malachy McKenna In the hidden Ireland off the new EU infrastructure of motorway and ring-road, two elderly farmers lean on a fence and talk in the low-key code of near neighbours. The Quiet Land is also a master-class, served as it is by a brace of actors - Kevin Flood and Barry Cassin - who’ve accumulated between them a hundred and thirty years of rich theatrical experience. It’s authored by Malachy McKenna, a player-turned-playwright, who’s best known for his film Tillsonberg. The play is his first piece for radio. Producer Aidan Mathews Two elderly farmers, Eamon and Nashee, meet at a gate on a remote hillside. These men are old friends, old rivals, old neighbours. They are men of heart, of humour, of hardness. Their conversation is a throwback to a gentler time, when silence was as telling as declaration and meaning was more often found between the lines than on them. But there's nothing gentle about today's conversation. In facing the bitter reality of their remote defiance, Eamon  and Nashee have grown fearful and desperate. Now they are forced to confront each other with some heartbreaking truths that test their friendship to its limit. After today, will they ever again talk on this hillside? With a wonderful blend of humor and pathos, ‘The Quiet Land’ is a celebration of life, resilience and the endearing innocence of an exiled generation as it struggles to survive in the isolated rural Ireland of today. It’s a real test of their lifelong friendship and is the author’s heartfelt tribute to a rare breed of forgotten men who live ‘a long way in off the road’. The Irish Times’ “The Quiet Land” review: lament for a disappearing Ireland “This is no country for old men, such as Eamon and Nashee, in Malachy McKenna’s sensitive new play about a very Irish decline. Meeting each other at a gate between their farms, Nashee and Eamon seem to haul around a lifetime worth of baggage, some of which McKenna uses to allude forcibly to the Irish theatrical canon. Nashee, for instance, holds a bullhook, reminiscent of Christy Mahon’s loy, while Eamon, his head in bandages after a recent attack, could have been its target, himself sporting a hurl that he uses as a crutch.”

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.