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by Bryan MacMahon
Cast includes: Emmet Byrne, Órlagh De Bhaldraithe, Helen Gregg, Daniel Guinnane, Martin Maguire, Zita Monahan, Joseph Moylan, Séamus O'Donnell and Emma O'Grady,
Directed by Caroline Lynch
Lighting design by Mike O'Halloran
Designer: Brendan Savage
Produced by Róisín Stack
"Here is a tale of the Irish roads, of a tinker and his wife. It's a tale of trouble and wildness and a child that's born to life..."
Breda Claffey has set her heart on returning to Kerry. For in Kerry is the Honey Spike, the 'lucky' hospital in which her child must be born.
No other spike will do. But she and her husband Martin are far from home, at the northernmost tip of Ireland - and Kerry is a long, wearisome distance by cart.
It's a journey of endurance lightened by laughter and mischief. The travellers tangle with soldiers at the border, priests in the Midlands and feuding clans in Kerry. Breda rushes towards the future but the past is waiting for her at Puck Fair in the shape of Winifred McQueen, the gypsy girl who wanted Martin for herself. The Honey Spike evokes an Ireland of passion, wildness and beauty. Its people live as they have always lived; putting their faith in God and in magic, in religion and superstition, but their greatest belief of all is in life itself.
Playwright Bryan McMahon comes from the great North Kerry tradition of Irish writers that includes his illustrious contemporary, John B. Keane. The Honey Spike, which was first produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1961, is widely regarded as his best play.
"...There's mating in it, birth and death and drink to flood a dyke So here's how they raced the bloody road that led to the Honey Spike"