Kabosh to tour McKeown’s online success Before You Go

Published: 15 March 2022
Reporter: Michael Quinn

Lisa Duffy, Eimear Fearon and James Doran in Laurence McKeown's Before You Go Credit: Ciarán Dunbar

Developed from a cross-border, cross-community arts project, Laurence McKeown’s Before You Go is a taut three-hander “about the fragility of love that explores themes of love, loss and living”.

Set in present-day Carlingford on the Irish border, it painfully prises open what has long been left unsaid between a father and his daughter on the eve of her emigrating to Australia; a conversation that reveals dark, hidden secrets and difficult truths.

McKeown says the play “looks at the difficulties of communicating with those who are closest to us and the consequences of not saying what we should while there is still time. Everyone has a past and I believe that the only way we ever move forward, whether as a family, a relationship, or as a society, is by people being prepared to speak openly about their past and others being prepared to listen. Only then will we be able to live in the moment, while letting the past exist.”

Returning to the roles they created for Before You Go’s online screening are James Doran, Eimear Fearon and Lisa Duffy.

Paula McFetridge again directs, with costume and set design by Liz Cullinane, lighting by Conleth White and music by Gráinne Holland.

The tour opens at the Old Church Centre, Cushendun on March 22 and plays eight other venues before coming into the Lyric Theatre, Belfast for three nights from April 5.

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