Enda Walsh & Anna Mullarkey's SAFE HOUSE to be Presented at St. Ann’s Warehouse

St. Ann’s Warehouse will present SAFE HOUSE, written and directed by Tony Award-winning Enda Walsh, with music by electronic-acoustic composer Anna Mullarkey, and produced by The Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s National Theatre. SAFE HOUSE, which made its world premiere at the Abbey in October 2024 at the Dublin Theatre Festival, further distinguishes St. Ann’s 45th Anniversary season—and the 10th in the theater it built on the Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront. SAFE HOUSE marks the Abbey’s first international transfer to the U.S. under its current leadership, Caitríona McLaughlin (Artistic Director) and Mark O’Brien (Executive Director). 
 
“When the world doesn’t want us or isn’t enough, we make our own worlds.” That’s what Grace, a young Irish woman living alone on an outdoor, debris-addled handball court, creates onstage, in Walsh and Mullarkey’s visceral blend of gig theatre, song cycle, and smashed-up memory play. The audience plunges inside Grace’s fractured inner life through “a stunning performance” (The Guardian) by Irish stage and screen actress Kate Gilmore. SAFE HOUSE comes alive with the help of the composer’s haunting, multi-genre score and Walsh’s spectacular visual world conjured by videographer Jack Phelan, set and Costume Designer Katie Davenport, lighting designer Adam Silverman, and sound designer Helen Atkinson. The creative team also includes Eoghan Carrick (Assistant Director), and Andrea Ainsworth (Voice Director).
 
Abbey Theatre Co-Director and Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin notes the work’s parallels to the larger Irish story of “displacement and exile” and “an existence eked out on the fringes.” She emphasizes that in Grace, Walsh finds parallels to “Ireland’s abandoned history” as we watch the protagonist “struggling to piece together her own history through a kaleidoscope of unclear memories and feelings.” McLaughlin adds, “Enda’s work speaks to mind, body and soul in a way that unsettles and provokes the imagination and the intellect.”
 
St. Ann’s Warehouse Artistic Director Susan Feldman says, “It is always an honor and a joy to join in whatever Enda Walsh is up to in his vast, eclectic career. We have presented nearly all his major plays at St. Ann’s. So when he described this ‘distinctly Enda’ musical exploration of a young girl at sea, we were in. I have been personally blown away by his imagination so many times since we first presented The Walworth Farce. Whether comedic or tragic, his empathy for us humans is both unique and profound.”
 
Beyond St. Ann’s, Walsh has also brought his raw lyricism to Broadway with the Tony-winning musical Once; written the book for David Bowie’s musical Lazarus; channeled his distinct theatricality into a series of installations with Rooms; and penned acclaimed film scripts like the Steve McQueen-directed Hunger and 2024’s Small Things Like These, also starring Cillian Murphy.
 

Photo credit: Ste Murray

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