The Well of the Saints & The Tinker’s Wedding

Following the success earlier this year of the critically acclaimed DruidSynge production of The Playboy of the Western World including its visit to Geesala in County Mayo where The Playboy of the Western World is set, Druid continues its celebration of the life and work of one of Ireland’s greatest writers with a very special double-bill from the Synge canon – The Well of the Saints and The Tinker’s Wedding.

This will be the first time since The Leenane Trilogy in 1997 that all three founding members of Druid – Garry Hynes, Mick Lally and Marie Mullen – have worked together on a production.

Described as one of the most ambitious undertakings in Irish theatre for many years, DruidSynge will see Garry Hynes direct all the plays of John Millington Synge over a period of eighteen months, culminating in the presentation of the entire canon in 2005.In The Well of the Saints, Martin and Mary Doul are an old, blind couple of the roads. When a wandering Saint offers them the miracle of their sight restored, they gladly accept. But instead of finding joy and happiness, they discover a seeing world that is a lot more complicated than they could ever have imagined!

In The Tinker’s Wedding, Sarah Casey, the Beauty of Ballinacree, has decided she wants the respectability of marriage to her fellow-tinker Michael Byrne. However, Michael believes that’s a daft notion – and, more to the point, so too does his porter-loving mother Mary Byrne!