Drama

Leland Bardwell had four plays produced on stage in Ireland, and a further five were written for and presented on BBC and RTE radio. The stage plays were: Thursday (produced in Players Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, 1974), Open-ended Prescription (produced in The Peacock Theatre, Dublin 1979), No Regrets (with music, staged in the National Stadium as The Edith Piaf Story, Dublin 1984), and Jocasta (presented outdoors in Sligo, and at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, 2001). Radio plays broadcast include The Revenge of Constance, Just Another Killing, The Happy Birthday (RTE broadcast), Open Ended Prescription (BBC broadcast 3rd Sept 1979) and Quiet Waters (BBC 1980).

She also wrote much other dramatic work that did not get staged: a film script Sorcha (about hiring fairs), A TV adaptation of Joyce’s story A Painful Case, a libretto for Siobhán Cleary’s Opera Jack Ashore, and the following titles for stage and radio: Anything's better than work, Cripples in the flypaper, Dead Elm, Tallaght, The Passing Night Paused to Bathe, and Dan's Inferno.

  • Thursday

    Bardwell’s first play, produced in 1974 at TCD, it also went on to Dún Laoghaire

  • The Edith Piaf Story

    Commissioned by Paul Funge for the Gorey Arts Festival, it played in the National Stadium

  • Open Ended Prescription

    Staged at the Peacock Theatre, part of the National Theatre.

  • Jocasta

    From the Dhá Ean production on the rocks at Cloonagh, with Sorcha Carroll (Jocasta), Myles Horgan (Laius), Kieran McBride (Oedipus) and Fionnuala Gallagher (Chorus)

typescript pages

TV adaptation of Joyce's A Painful Case
Front Page of Just Another Killing