As part of our commitment to artists and the development of new work, The Everyman has several playwrights under commission. This year, as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, we will present up close readings of never-before-heard plays by some of our writers.
Ireland and Russia. Michael Collins and the Romanovs. The last days of an old country and a state about to begin. Comrade is a moving and intimate play about friendship, loyalty and the personal cost of revolution.
Bob Kelly is an actor and theatre-maker from the west of Ireland. Trained at the Ecole Internationale de Jacques Lecoq in Paris, he has written for Landmark Productions (Breakfast on Pluto), for Blue Raincoat (Tintown, The Rallying Call, Footfalls) and for Hawk’s Well Theatre (The Big Wall).
Pat Kiernan founded Corcadorca in 1991, a Cork-based theatre company celebrated for their large-scale and site-specific productions, as well as the seminal Disco Pigs in 1996.
It’s just a wedding morning, what could go wrong? In Something Borrowed, everything. As Simone prepares to marry her “perfect” partner, one simple question cracks everything open. With a house full of clashing personalities and chaos mounting by the minute, this dark comedy tears into the myth of happily ever after with wit, bite and glorious chaos.
Irene Kelleher is a Cork-based playwright and actor whose plays Mary and Me and A Safe Passage are published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, produced for RTÉ Radio and staged in the US. Her acclaimed work includes Gone Full Havisham, which sold out at Cork Midsummer Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and Bewley’s, while Mary and Me won both an Argus Angel and a Bobby Award; most recently, she presented two new works, Stitch and Footnote, at Cork Midsummer Festival.
Lisa McGee is an award-winning writer from Derry who created the acclaimed television shows Derry Girls, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, Raw and London Irish.
Cork, 1990. Double is about a family reunited as the county chases a historic achievement. Tommy Harris’s new play is a comedy-drama about family, fallout, and something more important than life or death… sport.
Tommy Harris is an actor and writer from Cork and a nominee for Fishamble’s New Writing Award in 2024 for his debut one-man show Happy Capital, which was presented at The Everyman in 2025 as part of Cork Fringe. He is a writer under commission at The Everyman and is also a Next Wave Playwright at the Abbey Theatre for 2025 – 2026.
Katie O’Halloran is an interdisciplinary director based in Ireland, originally from Minnesota. She was the 2022 recipient of Druid’s Marie Mullen Bursary and was selected as an Irish National Opera studio director for their 2022 – 2023 season.
Performance schedule
Comrade Sat 20 Jun, 1pm
Something Borrowed Sat 20 Jun, 4pm
Double Sun 21 Jun, 3.30pm
Tickets
€8 One reading
€13 Two readings
€15 Three readings
Running time
Comrade 1 hr 30 min, no interval
Something Borrowed 1 hr 10 min, no interval
Double 1 hr 30 min, no interval