http://www.circaidygregory.co.uk/TomOBrien.htm

‘Cromwell’ started off as a joke. We were touring Ireland a couple of years ago with another of my plays ‘On Raglan Road’, and had just played in Dingle, Co. Kerry, where I had purchased a new biography of Oliver Cromwell’s time in Ireland. When somebody asked what my next play was going to be I replied ‘Cromwell The Musical’. Everybody laughed, including myself, but over the next few months there were several (joking) questions about ‘how is the musical coming on’, and I thought ‘ maybe I will surprise them all’. I did surprise them – myself included – by actually writing – and finishing – it!’

To Hell or to Connaught: that’s where Oliver Cromwell plans to send all Irish Catholics.

(The province of Connaught being perceived as little more than a collection of bogs and rocks, and of little use to English land-grabbers)

The year is 1649 and Oliver Cromwell is on the rampage in Ireland. His mission is to quell the Irish Catholic rebellion, with its growing support for English Royalists. Failure could mean a new Civil War in England. Not that he countenances failure; he has seen a vision – he truly believes he has God on his side.

Ireland’s only hope is Owen Ro O’Neill and his Ulster Army. O’Neill is a veteran of the Spanish Wars and is recognized as Ireland’s greatest soldier. Cromwell plans to ensure he doesn’t leave Ulster.

We see his journey through Ireland through his own eyes, those of his Puritan soldiers, and of two girls, Emir and Eithne, who, having been captured at the battle of Drogheda, are now being forced to work in the kitchens before being shipped off as slaves to the West Indies.

Emir is hiding a big secret; she is a spy for Owen Roe O’Neill’s Ulster army, She plans to poison Cromwell, little knowing that Cromwell’s own agents have a similar plan for O’Neill.

When Eithne is raped by one of the Puritan soldiers, both plan to escape and join the defenders at Limerick, where O’Neill’s Ulster army is making a last desperate stand.

PERFORMED IN MODERN DRESS

WITH A SPRINKLING OF MUSIC!

                                                       From 2013

THE SOLDIER

IF I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

Dublin

by Louis MacNeice

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals –
O’Connell, Grattan, Moore –
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades –
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler’s trick
You poise the toppling hour –
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.

AGENTS UNITED
The vultures have been circling
And will be for some time
Their Gordon Gekko faces
All suntanned and sublime
They utter words of wisdom such as On yer bike
And when pressed for clarification
They say things like;
It’s money down the drain
And football is a funny old game
Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling or the door
Aim for the ceiling and you will stay on the floor.
Success in football is all in the mind
You never lose a game if your opponent doesn’t score
Football is about being better
Than you were the day before
So set your goals high
And don’t stop until you get there
And don’t dream about being a footballer
Dream about being a millionaire.

THE COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

This is definitely the country for old men;

All they do is eat and sleep, shit and piss all day long.

They breathe unaided when able

And display their puny achievements

On their shiny bedside tables;

They shout ‘nurse’ at every woman that passes by

Sometimes not even knowing why.

This is where dignity means not wearing a nappy

And where a having a peaceful night

Is the next best thing to being happy.

In the morning the relentless cleaning army

Marches the corridors and recovery rooms

Paying lip service to King Bug

And his equally efficient army of bodyterrorists and goons.

See them leering and lurking in the corners and caverns

Encouraging those mobile to pop their pills in the dingy taverns.

At ten the medics sweep in, the hierarchy I mean

Being attended to like royalty by bees around their queen.

Their orders are issued  and the drones get busy

Drip-feeding the helpless and making them dizzy.

Yes, this is the country for helpless old men;

Thank God I’m escaping today

And never returning again.