Composer scales new heights with play

Best known as an accomplished contemporary classical composer, Ailis Ní Riain has written a play, The Tallest Man in the World which opens at the Triskel Development Centre (TDC) on Thursday as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival.

Directed by Pat Kiernan of Corcadorca, the play is about three characters “in very poignant situations,” says Ní Riain, who was born in Cork and now lives in the UK. “It’s about love, loneliness and not quite fitting in. It’s about trying to find the logic and the reasons for why things happen when they do. The grand objective of the play is a kind of epiphany but not one with bells and whistles. It’s a careful epiphany because I want it to last.”

The characters are Eamon, the tallest man in the world (played by Tadgh Hickey), Erin (played by George Hanover) and Phelim, Erin’s father (played by Dan Reardon). Erin has been searching for the tallest man in the world who, in her view, is her father.