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NEVER CLOSER

by GRACE CHAPPLE ​

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1987. Moonlight bathes a troubled Northern Ireland in a mournful melancholy. Night after night, a young woman lies awake, seeing ghosts in the shadows and hearing shrieking banshees on the gusts of night.

 

Deirdre is stuck – between friends, lovers and nations; haunted by the ghosts of the lives she almost lived. When her old school-friends gather in her kitchen once more for Christmas Eve, their once charming differences devolve into divisive fractures, revealing a dormant powder keg, tempting the tiniest of sparks.

 

Set against the backdrop of an occupied Ireland, Grace Chapple’s scorching debut play is an unforgettable drama of home, friendship, the decision to leave or stay and the possibility of forgiveness. A new Australian work from a young playwright ruminating on her ancestral land, Never Closer catches the tremors of a whole country and time, resonating with striking clarity in the here and now.

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Never Closer was first performed in the Downstairs Theatre at Belvoir Street Theatre on the 4th of October, 2022 before transferring to the Upstairs Theatre on the 25th of May, 2024. ​This production is co-produced with fortyfivedownstairs. 

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