Dolly West's Kitchen

T141745848
Buncrana, Donegal, 1944: while Allied troops prepare for D-Day, Ireland remains steadfastly neutral - or as neutral as the widespread anti-English inclinations will allow. But in the West household, neutrality is about to get the elbow... Rima West, the elderly matriarch, is wise, mischievous and incorrigible. She thinks it does folk good, every so often, to let a bit of 'badness' into a house. And God knows, her three grown-up children certainly need something to turn their lives around. Ester, the eldest, has grown bitter locked in a sterile marriage to the undemonstrative Ned. Her youngest, Justin, is a priggish Irish army officer, who nurses a fervent hope that the Germans will win the war. Her middle child, Dolly, once a restaurateur in Italy, now presides over the kitchen of Rima's house by the sea, her life empty of love. Over the border in Derry, the Allies prepare for the invasion of France. Among them is Dolly's former lover, Alec, an Englishman now serving in the British army. So Rima invites Alec and a couple of GIs - one quiet, handsome and polite, the other, the campest infantryman in the US Army - to dinner. And when the soldiers of three different armies collide with the West clan at Dolly's kitchen table , a whole new front opens up...

Author

Frank McGuinness

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Archive :: production:T141745848, play:S01161497357, venue:V276

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