Overview
It's mad that ye're here with me. In Cobh. I always felt like I was
born on the brink of the world. That I was near death, always. And here I
am! Hereafter. This place of slower motion. But whipping energy. Back
Home.
A woman lies dead in her grave in the Tumbledown
cemetery, Cobh, County Cork. It's a recent relocation; only two weeks
before she was living in a flat near Croke Park in Dublin, beneath two
East European prostitutes who she had begun to be friendly with.
From her last resting place, she tells the story of her life: her
happy childhood and the mother who loved Cleopatra; being struck by
lightning and then missing school for a year; her night shifts in hotels
washing and mending laundry; up to her ultimate and untimely demise in a
north Dublin flat; all via a series of unlikely encounters and
heartbreaking betrayals.
Written in Pat Kinevane's signature style, Underneath
is a blackly comic, rich and vivid tale of a life lived in secret, a
testament to the people who live on the fringes, under the nose of
everyday life.
Underneath was published to coincide with the play's first production by Fishamble theatre company in December 2014.