Rathfarnham Theatre Group is proud to present Aristocrats by Brian Friel.

The play centres around the O’Donnell children who have gathered for the pending wedding of the youngest daughter, Claire, while their father, District Justice O’Donnell, lies dying in his bedroom tended to by his eldest daughter, Judith.  An air of decay and decline pervades the house and gardens.

First produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1979, Brian Friel’s Aristocrats is a touching and harrowing play about the decline of a once prosperous Catholic family, inhabiting ‘Ballybeg Hall’, the big house on a hill overlooking Ballybeg, a fictional village in Donegal.  The house is crumbling down, as is the family.  They are caught between two social and political worlds in the Ireland of the 1970s with the Troubles in Northern Ireland a mere 20 miles across the border from Ballybeg.

“An engrossing tale of decaying culture and rocky relationships” Michael Billington, The Guardian (Donmar Warehouse London Aug 2018).