Happy Birthday Dear Alice is Bernard Farrell's much loved and hilarious comedy on the efforts of a dysfunctional family to commit their aging yet resilient mother to a nursing home so that they can sell her house. It is at once an affectionate hymn to old age and a ruthlessly comic dissection of family life from the master of dark comedy.
Directed by Jim Nolan and produced by Four Rivers Theatre Company, Happy Birthday Dear Alice has been described as Farrell’s most complete and fully realised play.
Cast
On of Ireland’s best loved actors, Catherine Byrne (Alice) trained at the Abbey School of Acting and has spent the past forty years working in theatre, television and film, including Eat the Peach, The Tudors, Inspector Jury and The last Right. She also spent four years playing Dr. Judith Dillon in Fair City. Memorable plays include The Field, Dancing at Lughnasa and A Month in the Country. She has appeared at the Abbey Theatre in Unmanageable Sisters, In Our Veins and One Good Turn.
Mark Lambert (Jimmy) is an experienced stage and screen actor: his film and television credits include Women on the Verge, Fair City, The Journey, Raw, The Last Templar, Breakfast on Pluto and Veronica Guerin. Notable stage appearances include The Gigli Concert at The Druid Theatre, Long Day’s Journey into Night at the Young Vic, Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey and Alls Well that Ends Wall at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mark Fitzgerald (Cormac) has established a strong screen presence in recent years, with roles in Vikings: Valhalla, The Northman, Dark Red, Little Women, Muse, The Irish Mob and Loving Miss Hatto. Mark is a founding member of Perennial Theatre Company and trained at the Drama Centre London and at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, and won The Spotlight Award in 2006.
Sarah Madigan (Barbara) has appeared in Tarry Flynn, The Beauty Queen of Leenana, Translations (National Theatre, London), The Unmanageable Sisters and Jimmy’s Hall at The Abbey. Her film and television roles include Unwelcome, The Syndicate, Doctors and Saor Sinn O Olc.
Andrew Macklin (Barry) is an experienced stage actor who has appeared in An Inspector Calls (UK & International Tour), The Baleful Lie (Tristan Bates Theatre), Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern (Out of Joint/Watford Palace/Arcola Theatre/Tour), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Curve Theatre), Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Chipping Norton Theatre), The Mercy Seat (York Theatre Royal), King Lear, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Sisters (Abbey Theatre). His television roles includes: The Holiday, Doctor Who, Doctors, Jubilee Nurse, Mr Selfridge and Fair City.
Elishka Lane (Sandy) is an actor and theatre-maker from County Wexford. She is a recent graduate from Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is a founding member of Gift Horse Theatre Company, emphasising environmentally conscious theatre practice and playful, dynamic reimagining’s of classic texts. Her recent theatre credits include Tender Napalm (Smock Alley Theatre), Wexford Playwright Readings (Wexford Arts Centre), The Hamlet Review (Theatre Royal Waterford), CHARMS!, Supermoon, (Samuel Beckett Theatre) and Twelfth Night, Tess (Gift Horse Theatre).
‘Red hot play...a huge hit’ - Irish Independent