The Narrow Ground (1993)

For a long time I rated this as my best work; I still hold in huge esteem and it's only that I think I've learned a bit more since then that makes me think I may have done better.
After the dust settled on Wild Harvest, I began work on a script called Mountain Sunday, based around the shift from pre-Christian society in Ireland to the Christian/Roman society heralded by the arrival of St. Patrick.  It was a lumbering piece of work, though it is curious to note that The Festival of Lughnasa, by Maire MacNeill, was a key source of ideas; obviously Brian Friel knew a thing or two more than I did about bringing ideas together in a dramatic form.  Anyway, at a time when I was struggling with this unwieldy script, and making some small progress towards breathing life into some stuffy characters, I got a call from Andy Hinds.  He offered to use the script as working material in a workshop for emerging directors in Belfast, to give them an example of how you might work with a new script.  I accepted with a willing heart, and found myself once again in the Old Museum, sitting around a table with a group of theatre types.  A latecomer to this group was Paddy McCoey from Dock Ward Community Theatre; he had stepped in to fill a vacant seat at the last minute.  We got talking, and over the course of an evening's chat/debate/inspiration in a snug in The Crown, we determined that my script would become the basis for the next Dock Ward community theatre production.  Eight months later, I had completely re-written the piece as The Narrow Ground, creating characters around the members of Dock Ward, and working with Jules Maxwell on a series of songs which ran through the performance.
If you strike against my brother,
Then you strike also at me.
We are tied to one another,
By such bonds you cannot see.
It was a play about war, hate, family, community, love, tradition, and duty: duty to the past and duty to the future; in the end, the duty to the future weighed more in the balance.  A bit like Spike Milligan and Hitler's downfall, The Narrow Ground was my part in the peace process, or half of it; the other half came in 1995, with The Mourning Ring.