Rhapsody in Stephens Green

Using a play by Karl and Josef Capek as source, Flann O'Brien locates his insect drama in Dublin, his most familiar stalking- territory. His adaptation is a vehicle for ridicule and invective, targeting race, religion, greed, identity and purpose. With his extraordinary ear for dialogue, O'Brien creates his own fantastical world, and the outcome is a hilarious satire of Irish stereotypes - as Orangemen, Dubliners, Corkagians and culchies become warring ants, bees, crickets, dung-beetles, and other small-minded invertebrae. The lost text of this play, Hilton Edwards' prompt copy from the 1943 Gate Theatre performance, was discovered in the archives at Northwestern University, Illinois.

FLANN O'BRIEN (aka Myles na gCopaleen, Brian O'Nolan), Irish civil servant and toper, was a novelist, journalist, critic, playwright, and comic writer of genius. He died on April Fool's Day, 1966, aged fifty-five.