I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls

On a cold Autumn day in 1985 at a dilapidated smallholding near Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, two men are the only mourners at the funeral of "Mad" Maddy Ingram. The elderly man remembers Maddy as a young woman, the toast of the county, and believes that his marriage proposal to her in 1935 was a case of unrequited love. The younger, Daniel, remembers how as a boy he collected buttermilk from the farm and became the protege of the bedraggled, lonely Maddie of later years. Their memories bring alive the young Madelyn and the harsher, older Maddy, her demanding, wastrel brother Liam, and the young police constable George Park, intertwining their lives with the passions of patriotism and landscape.Ade Morris's play, based on the true characters in a short story by Bryan Gallagher, skilfully weaves the narrative backwards and forwards through a span of fifty years and the result is a richly emotive, lyrical drama of enduring love. The seven characters may be played individually or, as in the original production, by two men and one woman with one set providing all the locations.