Only an Apple by Tom MacIntyre, Peacock Theatre

You have to wonder why Irish dramatists keep writing plays about politicians. In 1969, Brian Friel’s The Mundy Scheme brilliantly satirised the political life of that period, while anticipating much that would follow. Yet that play is never revived, has been out of print for years, and is rarely written about. In 2001, Sebastian Barry premiered Hinterland, another grossly underrated drama about a fictitious Taoiseach, who in this case resembled Charles Haughey. Barry’s play was accused of being ‘moronic’ in the press; he later said that the critical response in Ireland was like something out of Stalin’s Russia. Marina Carr’s 2002 Ariel had as its protagonist a midlands politician who sells his soul for political power. That work was greeted not with hostility, but with indifference and snide contempt – and Carr has not written a play set in the midlands since. non-peer-reviewed