BAN Production Photos ©Rich Davenport

BÁN – Abbey Theatre (Peacock Stage) – Review

Part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.

BÁN – An Abbey Theatre production – Written by Carys D. Coburn
Directed by Claire O’Reilly
Dates: 30 September – 8 November 2025

Bernadette (Bríd Ní Neachtain) is the matriarch of the family. Her second husband has recently died, and the entire family is in mourning. We meet the five daughters as they are busy making sandwiches for the upcoming funeral. Mary Elizabeth (Niamh McCann) is the eldest of the daughters. She is the daughter of Bernadette’s first husband and is quite wealthy due to her inheritance. She has a young man called Peter chasing her affection. However, the course of love is never straightforward, and Peter has feelings for another of Bernadette’s daughters.

This production is a “reworking” of Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. The original play came with the subtitle “a drama of women in the villages of Spain”. It was completed on 19 June 1936, only two months before Lorca’s death during the Spanish Civil War. The play was first performed in 1945 in Buenos Aires. This adaptation is billed as “faithful but not close”.  You can make of that distinction what you will!

The play is written by Carys D. Coburn, who was one of the founding members of MALAPROP theatre company. They wrote plays such as Citysong (2019), which was performed on the main stage of the Abbey, and Hothouse, which won Best Production at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2023. Director Claire O’Reilly is also a member of MALAPROP and has worked with Carys on several projects, including Hothouse.

“Franco’s Spain onto de Valera’s Ireland – Catholic Fascism = Catholic Fascism” or so say the programme notes. While de Valera is a very controversial figure in Irish history, the comparison between Ireland and Spain is loose at best. The play is set somewhere in the 1980s in Ireland, where conservative values are still to the fore. The play is quite different to the source material. Writer Carys D. Coburn has added an additional subplot, which further complicates the narrative. You’d need a pen and paper to make sense of the complicated family tree! While set in the 1980s, and the characters have quite modern views on the world and sexual relations.

“All of us running around, thinking we’re so clever, so good at keeping secrets, and actually everyone knows everything and just never says.”

The daughters are the undoubted highlight of the piece, with each of the five young women being a complex and well-drawn character. Bláithín Mac Gabhann gets many of the funniest lines, as Mary Louise, the middle daughter who knows all the family secrets and hides them behind a wall of religion. Liadán Dunlea plays Edele, the youngest of the daughters and the most impetuous. Bríd Ní Neachtain plays the carnivorous matriarch Bernadette, who rules the house with an iron fist! It’s an ambitious work that has considerable success in exploring the complex family dynamics on display.

BAN Production Photos ©Rich Davenport

Credits
Annie: Malua Ní Chléirigh
Edele: Liadán Dunlea
Frances: Yvonne Gidden
Mary Rose: Bebhinn Hunt-Sheridan
Mary Louise: Bláithín Mac Gabhann
Mary Elizabeth: Niamh McCann
Bernadette: Bríd Ní Neachtain

Writer: Carys D. Coburn
Director: Claire O’Reilly
Set and Costume Designer: Sarah Bacon
Lighting Design: Lee Curran
Sound Designer and Composer: Jenny O’Malley
Voice Director: Cathal Quinn
Movement Director: Gabrielle Moleta
Hair and Make Up: Tee Elliott
Casting Director: Barry Coyle
Assistant Director: Úna Nolan
Image of Carys D. Coburn: Louise Boughton
Graphic Design: AAD
Promotional Photography: Patricio Cassinoni