The Great Hunger, UCC Granary Theatre

The misery, deprivations and loneliness of an Irish rural existence are brought to life in Jack Healy’s performance of Patrick Kavanagh’s epic poem, ‘The Great Hunger,’ directed by Ger Fitzgibbon.

First published in 1942, it is the poet’s answer to the sentimentalised version of peasant life that he found prevalent among the Dublin literati.

The protagonist is bachelor farmer, Patrick Maguire, who is sexually and spiritually starved, living a humdrum existence with his mother and spinster sister. Repression is a big theme, with Maguire describing his mother as being “hard as a Protestant spire.” He relates how she would be ready to die if her daughter found a husband.