By The Bog Of Cats Drama in two parts

Although her plays have not previously been performed in Hungary, Dublin-born Marina Carr is one of the best-known exponents of the dramatic genre in the international arena. In 1989, at the age of twenty-five, she drew much attention to herself in her home country and in England with her first play, and her work has since been performed across the world.

By the Bog of Cats is a tragedy of fate set in today’s world, a kind of contemporary variation on Medeia, in which – as befits the Irish stage – the vague figures of the afterlife and murky fairy-tales continue to come and go amongst the living with deathly ease.

Marina Carr’s voice is unmistakable. In her tragedies, women with unusual fates try to avoid, or perhaps to pass on, family curses that inevitably take hold, generation after generation. Her stage world is not a realistic one; her powerful reality is lit up by myth and darkened by the ballad. However moving the story, By the Bog of Cats is not only gripping and poignant, but also has its entertaining moments.