A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match. Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness.

A major play from a major Irish playwright "Bailegangaire is as complex and haunting as one of Yeats' later poems ...A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match ...Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness. Here is a potent allegory - of the need to exorcise the past and its myths if one is to be happy in the future." (Sunday Telegraph)