About
The play takes its title from a popular song of the 1930s, a period in which some of the scenes are set. It opens in contemporary Ireland with an old masked figure – Timothy Lavell – seated by the hearth of a cottage on the Mullet peninsula. We follow in Act I scenes from Timothy’s childhood, including his trip by boat and train to Scotland, and his time there potato-picking, before return home again. In Act II we follow Timothy’s life in America. He finds work as an elevator man, and encounters many races and creeds. His experiences, his failed love affair, his hallucinations, and his fears are explored. Eventually he returns to Ireland to sit by the hearth like his father and mother before him. Timothy Lavell is a stubborn survivor of another age.
Running Time
1Hr 30 Minutes - No Interval
Author
Dermot Healy was an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and short story writer. Born in 1947 in Finea, Co Westmeath, Dermot grew up in Cavan town where his mother owned the Milseanacht Bhreifne Café on Main Street. He settled in Ballyconnell, County Sligo and was described variously as a "master", a "Celtic Hemingway" and as "Ireland's finest living novelist”. Often overlooked outside Ireland due to his relatively low public profile, Healy's work is admired by his Irish literary predecessors, peers and successors alike, many of whom idolise him - among the writers to have spoken highly of him are Seamus Heaney, Eugene McCabe, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe and Anne Enright. Healy won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his 2010 poetry collection, A Fool's Errand. Long Time, No See was nominated for the International IMPAC Literary Award, the world's most valuable literary award for a single work in the English language, by libraries in Russia and Norway.
Awards
Abbey Theatre Award Winner 2019
