Stage:

Flight of the Balfes is a one act play set in the country kitchen on the Balfe family. The patriarch, Cornelius Balfe is rarely there for his family on account of his acute narcolepsy. Family loyalty is brought into question. Entered into the Cork Arts Theatre One Act Play competition (results of which are due out in early Autumn).

Talking to Aloysius Wrenn is a very short one man piece:

* SCENE *

Spotlight on one man, Lucideous Cope. He sits on a wooden chair.
All stage is in darkness. Right half of stage curtain is drawn to mid point. He sits just at curtain’s reach.

LUCIDEOUS COPE:

Christened?! Christening is something that Christians do! My folks were clearly laughing at the font when I was being splashed! I mean, what kind of a person would call their child Lucideous? And right under our Lord’s nose?! But your name is far more upstanding. Solid. Aloysius Wrenn. I couldn’t pal around with someone who has a boring name. Yours is worth introducing. “This is my good friend Aloysius Wrenn!”
(beat)
Do you remember the time we were walking along Sandymount beach? We’d had a few small ones in a pub nearby. The evening breeze was pulling and scraping some crispy seaweed across the damp sand and you shivered when you saw it. You said the weed was like some cancer on the beach – ruining its lovely smoothness.
(beat)
That’s the artist in you! No, no. I mean it. No one else sees things like you do. No one. You were always eager to see something new in something old. Like the old house that you bought that time – a wreck of a place with so many layers of paint. You sanded it by hand. Layer upon layer. Each stroke of the sandpaper exposed a different colour. All the eras of fashion! I helped you. I wanted to see you happy in your little cottage in Portobello. But after it was all done you despised what you had exposed. The wood had a grand complexion – but the smoothness again ruined by the ugly knots in the wood, you said.
(beat)
But you liked it there cos you enjoyed the canal so much. Whats it you used to say? You used to say that it made you feel good to be alive. You’d wake up in the morning after a night of drinking and credit yourself for not having fallen into it on your way home. Another night where you cheated death!
(beat)
Ah! Your piano that you played when drunk – but not drunkenly! The neighbours must have despised those notes! It was beautiful, I thought. We’d be in your sitting room smoking, sipping the special stuff and I, breathing in those airs. You did a good Chopin impression. And the wood around us all smooth and exposed.
(beat)
This stuff is good though. It is smooth. I asked them for wood with no knots, dear Aloysius.

[Lucideous rises and exits stage right. As he does the right hand curtain is drawn back and stage is dimly lit to reveal a knotless coffin on a trolley]