ALSO PLAYING
King Of The Castle (Gaiety
HHH) premiered at Dublin Theatre Festival 1964. It’s the story of 59-year-old Monaghan farmer Scober McAdam, who has sold his emotional and spiritual soul for the sake of possessions and has made himself top man in his surroundings by devotion to work. His ultimate reward has been marriage to the attractive Tressa, 30 years his junior. But the price of it all has been an inability to express love or to recognise Tressa’s love for him. Scober is not just emotionally but also sexually impotent, which means he can’t produce a son. That’s the tragedy for this king of the castle. He offers to pay farm worker Matt to impregnate his wife... what he can’t provide himself can be bought. On the purely functional level he can’t see the problem. Eugene McCabe’s play is essentially a dialogue between the three main characters, with lots of utilitarian philosophising from Scober (Seán McGinley), uneasy verbal fencing by Matt (Ryan Donaldson) and a predictable double reaction by Tressa (Seána Kerslake). Rea was Scober’s ridiculing tormenter, forcing his hand.