St Petersburg and other plays

Three haunting, elliptical plays by a talented writer from Northern Ireland. St Petersburg comprises three scenes involving three characters, an old man, his middle-aged daughter, and a ten-year-old boy. St Petersburg was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in October 2008 as the centrepiece to the theatre's Broken Space Season, and was nominated for the 2009 Meyer Whitworth Award. Limbo is a monologue in which a 17-year-old girl tells us the story of her relationship with an older man and what it led to. Limbo was first staged at Queen's Drama Studio, Belfast, in 2005. It was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007. Catherine Medbh is a bittersweet and hesitant duologue in a bar between a youngish man and woman who are ex-lovers. Catherine Medbh was first staged by the Miniaturists at the Arcola Theatre, London, in March 2007. Though the spareness of the dialogue can be poetic, in Declan Feenan's writing it is what's going on under the words that carries the emotional charge. His characters talk, often quite volubly, but all we hear is the unbridgeable gap between them and the evasions and concealments with which they live their lives.