Millennium Forum Derry

Carthaginans

by Frank McGuinness

Directed by Adrian Dunbar

One of the few enduring plays to have emerged from the Troubles, Carthaginians is an elegy for Bloody Sunday in Derry. The tragedy and the intense grief becomes the unspoken subject through the personal journeys of three women and three men who camp out in a graveyard awaiting the rise of the dead.

Dido is the outsider who brings daily pram loads of supplies including a script of his own attempt at a Troubles Play, The Burning Balaclava, the comic centrepiece which is surrounded by jokes, quizzes and encounters which pass the time of waiting. Individual resurrections signal a community, like Carthage, rising from its ashes.