A funeral is the start of many interesting encounters and non more interesting than here at County Kerry, Ireland in 1963. Maggie Polpin has just buried her hard drinking, abusive husband and is just about to take up the challenge of looking after the family affairs. A farm is to run and a shop to look after. Added to this are four grown up children that have been put upon in the past and are hoping for better things from the future.

A clue as to how things will progress is given when Maggie encounters Byrne an admirer, played with amusing style by Ged McKenna, a monumental mason in the grave yard, and does a deal for a gravestone for cash there and then. This is Maggie played by Angela Bain, who grows big in relation to her physical stature from that moment, both in her performance and character. This is a masterly performance from this actress.

The convincing accent and language add to a play set in the emerging Ireland. The young people want new things from the world, but Maggie has other ideas, for she has not had all she wanted from the world and this has made her hard. She feels the children should have discipline and procedes to administer it. One by one the children rebel and leave home. First Mick, played by Padraic McIntyre, who has run the farm, leaves in ugly circumstances because Maggie wants to rule his life, and goes to England. Next Kate, played by Caitriona Hinds, is told to stop playing around and marry the intended boy.

Whilst all this is going on Maggie has decided that she is now single and can get some of the sexual freedom that seems to be available for the younger members of her family. The first object of her desire is a smooth commercial traveller called Teddy, played by Sean O’Callaghan, who had dated the other daughter Mary, played by Jacqueline Jansen. This mischief causes Mary to leave to join her brother in England and become a nurse.

The only one left is Maurice, played by Simon Nelson, who Maggie is sure has not the courage to leave. She had not reckoned on the boy’s girlfriend Gert, played by Pauline Shanahan, becoming pregnant. Even an encounter with the boy’s future mother in law Mrs Madden, played by Sally Armstrong, doesn’t smooths things and he too leaves this hard hearted woman alone to contemplate what she is to do with the rest of her life.

Two busy bodies played by Peter Shorey and Patricia Leventon flit in and out throughout the proceedings to add to the drama in the graveyard and the Polpin’s shop.

This play by one of Ireland’s great writers, John B Keane, has a depth of feeling known to everyone in similar circumstances and shows how the problems of such a life are resolved.

An enormously entertaining play with an underlying sadness is well worth the effort to go and see and make your own mind up as to what was really troubling Maggie.

Gwenda Hughes’s direction is fine and the Michael Holt’s ingenious scene changing, without using stagehands, is an inspiration. © BA

“Big Maggie” is in Scarborough until the 21st of October, 2000.