The first production of the '97-98 season was Samuel Beckett's Happy Days.  In this play, Beckett pursues his search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the world, to the past and the present.  Willie and Winnie are man and wife (probably) and have been so for a considerable time.  The circumstances are strange.  Winnie is buried up to her waist in earth. The incommunicative Willie reads his newspaper.  Even as the earth may soon engulf her, Winnie maintains a stream of chatter, asking to be heard.  What does it all mean?  The answers may lie within us. 

"centered firmly in the Universe of Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. It's everything small theater should be" - The Boston Phoenix 
 

Red Roses and Petrol by Joseph O'Connor
November
Directed by Aidan Parkinson
American premiere
Cast:  Ciaran Crawford, Irene Daly, Sarah deLima, Eileen Nugent, Aidan Parkinson, Brian Scally

Joseph O'Connor explores the emotional landscape of a family trying to come to terms with itself, while simultaneously trying to preserve it fictions, secrets and silences.  When the Doyle family reconvenes in Dublin for the cremation of the father Enda, they instantly begin to pick at the light scabs over old wounds, which quickly escalates to all out hostilities. 

"Joseph O'Connor is the man to read if laughing out loud is the only exercise you get" - Roddy Doyle

"family relations' double edged sword have seldom been sharper than in Súgán's memorable staging" - New England Entertainment Digest 

"it's fun to listen to this new voice (playwright O'Connor) developing and watching a talented company at work" - Boston Herald 
 

Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr
March 
Directed by Carmel O'Reilly
American premiere
Cast:  Miles Cares, Ciaran Crawford, Teddy Crecelius, Nancy Ferranti, Geralyn Horton, Miki Joseph, Billy Meleady, Sarah O'Connor, Douglas Rainey, Brian Scally, Kathleen Troost

Portia Coughlan lives life in monstrous limbo, haunted by a yearning for her spectral twin brother drowned in the Belmont river. No longer able to give love to nor care for her wealthy husband and children, she seeks solace in soulless affairs, as her world becomes progressively more unstable. Set against a brooding backdrop of small-town Ireland, traveling back and forth in time, at once sinister and profoundly moving, Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan witnesses the struggle to reconcile all engulfing loss with life's petty inconsequence.

"Portia Coughlan represents another nugget - lumpy, to be sure, but with glints of gold - in Súgán's ongoing mission to mine the dramatic lode on the emerald isle … The Súgán troupe is potentially a jewel in Boston's rather sparse theatrical tiara" - The Boston Globe 

"a dark sophisticated production ... one of the BCA's most polished efforts" - South End News
 
 

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