Closing Time, by Owen McCafferty

Closing Time, by Owen McCafferty

Opening Friday, March 30

Closing Sunday, April 15

Closing Time, by Owen McCafferty

From the script’s back cover: “A run-down pub/hotel in Belfast acts as a refuge for the drinkers who stop there – including the owners. This is a day like many before it – yet different – sometimes we have to face up to the truth. A tender and comic portrait of love, dignity and emotional damage…”

From The Guardian, reviewer Michael Billington: “As all the action takes place in a grotty, run-down Belfast pub-hotel, it is impossible not to see the play as a metaphor for Northern Ireland’s own political stasis…To his credit, however, McCafferty focuses primarily on the sad circumstances of the bar’s drunken denizens. Robbie, the publican heavily in debt to the brewery, dreams of development plans …Clearly, McCafferty owes a huge debt to Eugene O’Neill. Like Harry Hope’s waterfront bar in The Iceman Cometh, this pub is a home of lost illusions and a sanctuary from the terrors of the outside world. But, while scarcely mentioning politics or religion, McCafferty constantly reminds you that these Belfast topers are symbolically drinking in the last chance saloon.”

The Irish Players of Rochester is a program of the Rochester Community Players, founded in 1997 by Peter Scribner. The program presents one play each spring of Irish or Irish-American playwrights. After performing locally, we take our production ‘on the road’ to the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival (AIITF). In recent years, our Irish Players program has performed in Florida, Chicago, and Milwaukee, as well as in Canada in Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal and in Dublin, Ireland. In 2008, we hosted the AIITF in Rochester, and are hosting again in 2017.

General Admission $19

Under 25 $9

Over 65 $14

Directed by Jean Gordon Ryon

Produced by Peter Scribner

The Cast

Tom Bigongiari as Iggy

T. Bohrer as Alec

Kathy Dauer as Vera

Ken Dauer as Joe

Gregory Ludek as Robbie

This project is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and administered by the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts at the Livingston Arts Center, a member supported organization.

Closing Time is produced by special arrangement with The Agency (London) Ltd.