The Tide Can Wait (1990)

This short one-man show arose out of months of research and study around James Connolly and the 1916 Rising in Dublin.  I first came across Connolly as a real person when I was studying industrial relations history, and I began to learn about the man behind the icon.  As luck would have it, there was a book in my family home, written by his daughter, Nora, called Portrait of a Rebel Father.  I felt myself pointed towards Connolly and wrote a number of theatre pieces in my efforts to understand the man.  At the end of the day, the most I could do was to picture him in the chair in the stone-breakers yard in Kilmainham, waiting for the bullets.  Fintan Brady played Connolly in the Tinderbox production at the Old Museum in Belfast.  Chris Glover directed.  The play found another life in the hands of Brendan Murray, who played Connolly in Galway and Paris the following year.