CONTINUING their commitment to championing emerging theatre talent, the Lyric Theatre is set to showcase new play Cailíní by Belfast playwrights Íde Simpson and Beth Strahan. Debuting at the Samuel Beckett Theatre Dublin in November 2023, as part of a final piece for the Trinity College Drama and Theatre Studies degree, to a sold-out audience and much praise, Cailíní draws on rich Irish theatre heritage to give a contemporary take on the intrinsic link between Irish femininity and domesticity. The dispersed Mahon sisters Katherine (Lily-Kate Hearns), Clodagh (Megan Doherty) with boyfriend Eamonn Brown (Séan McDermott), Annie (Éabha Ó Céidigh Hayes), and half-sister Mairead (Juliet Hill) return to the family home at the behest of their sister Úna (Íde Simpson), with news that their father is sick. Over the course of the evening, truths that the sisters would rather withhold from each other begin to spill out as they share childhood memories and clearly struggle to interact as adults. And with their father still yet to make an appearance, Katherine and Úna battle it out to answer the question that they have wanted to know the answer to since their mother died: whose kitchen is this?
