Poor Beast in the Rain

Taking up the theme of life in Wexford, in the early 80s, Poor Beast in the Rain intrigues by its innate ordinariness.
There are no murders, no explosions in this play, indeed there is no reference at all to what, at that time, would have been the all-encompassing issue called 'The National Question '.



Instead the drama is hung around a very innocent event in Irish society - an All Ireland Final.
What haunts all the characters in the play is the memory of friends and loved ones who have abandoned or betrayed them.
None of the six characters have broken free of the recent past. Trapped like flies in amber, they have nothing better to do
than hang around a betting parlour and bet on the dog races and obsess about the town's champion hurling team.
It is the story of Eileen who looks after her father Steven's betting shop.
Eileen dreams of her mother who abandoned her ten years earlier by running off with the local bad boy, Danger Doyle.
We meet Georgie and Joe, men who evidently spend a lot of time in the shop (albeit for very different reasons).




Joe, the kind of man who would want to arrive early for his own funeral, dispenses much advice to his younger cohort. He enjoys spinning
yarns, mostly based on his own experiences as a wild youngster, when he and partner-in-crime Danger Doyle were the local hotshots.
Georgie is in love with pretty Eileen.
Eileen, Joe and Georgie all endure sarcastic barbs from the cleaner Molly !
She was once Danger Doyle’s girlfriend and is still mourning his loss ten years on.




As excitement about the match reaches fever pitch, we hear that Danger Doyle is back in town.!
His arrival turns the whole town upside down. His actions have already had a profound effect on Joe who worshipped but betrayed him, Steven whose wife he stole, and Molly, the cleaner, who has been in love with him for all of the years of his absence.
His return now forces Eileen into a dilemma and she has to make a choice.

Ironically enough, it is the outsider Doyle who sees fit to bring up the stultifying effect of the small town they all grew up in, suggesting perhaps
that he is the only character who has tried to come to terms with the issue.
As the drama unfolds and comes to an unexpected close, Roche's script shines a light on the profound disappointment with life, felt equally by
each of the characters, even if some are afraid to admit it even to themselves.




Like the Ireland of 1989 when the play was first produced, this betting shop is a world left behind by its best and brightest.
Though the Ireland of 2009 is radically different from 1989, or even the late 1970s, many questions regarding social, moral,
and community values are asked in this play which are still pertinent today. Roche does not suggest merely that things
were better when everyone stayed at home, but he does wonder what happens to a place, a people, a culture, when it sheds
its baggage of tradition and strides bravely towards new horizons.