IN OUR VEINS Comes to the Peacock Stage

This month sees the world premiere of Lee Coffey's new play In Our Veins, a Bitter Like Lemon and Abbey Theatre co-production. The production marks the Abbey Theatre début for Lee - a Dublin based playwright, who was a participant in the prestigious Rough Magic SEEDS programme in 2017, on the 2018 New Playwrights Programme at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and is now one of Six In The Attic, an Irish Theatre Institute initiative to support and promote emerging creative talent. He is a founding member of Bitter Like a Lemon Theatre Company, whose production Leper + Chip has been performed to great acclaim in Ireland and at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it was nominated for the Broadway Baby 5 Star Award and the National Student Drama Award for Best Play.

In In Our Veins, lifelong Dublin docker Patrick has passed away surrounded by his beloved wife Esther, his son and his grandchildren. As they remember his life, Esther recounts a tale they are yet to hear. The play follows their family through 100 years of Dublin, from the notorious madams of the Monto to love in the dark tenements. This is the story of a Dublin City that no longer exists, where it came from and the people that helped build it.

Speaking about this production, Lee Coffey said: This is a love letter to Dublin, in every sense. Putting a lens up to a world that no longer exists and that will never exist again. With the help of The Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society and The North Inner City Folklore Project's publications of Dublin's social history, I hoped to put a mirror up to now by taking you back to a forgotten world. A world of tough choices, hardship and survival where human kindness knew no bounds, as the dark and unforgiving world took everything.'

In Our Veins is the first of two Dublin Port Company commissions to be staged at Ireland's National Theatre - the second being Last Orders at the Dockside by Dermot Bolger - in 2019, as part of the Port Perspectives Initiative.

Eamonn O'Reilly, Chief Executive, Dublin Port Company, said: "We have been hugely impressed by Bitter Like a Lemon, a young theatre company with some powerful productions already under its belt. We are looking forward to seeing In Our Veins take to the stage and bring the port story to life. It's the first of three productions in Dublin Port's year of theatre commissions, and we can't wait to see how Lee and his team have responded to the brief."

Directed by Maisie Lee, the cast includes Cast: Ian Lloyd Anderson, Catherine Byrne, Gerard Byrne, Aisling O'Mara, Jack Mullarkey and Amilia Stewart. The production opens on 11 April and runs until 20 April, with an Abbey Theatre Free First Preview on 10 April 2019.

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