DATES
Assembly Roxy November 2nd to 5th 2015 

'There is something horribly relentless about the whole production, which has strong echoes of modern conflicts, notably Vietnam, with black-and-white war footage used for both narrative effect and as a backdrop.
​
Its success, and it is not one which is easy to watch, is in depicting that which is usually beyond comprehension. Here is a war that is pointless outside its own deathly internal logic, grinding on inexorably as a cold, eternal hell on earth.'
​Thom Dibdin All Edinburgh Theatre

'[A]n effective presentation of a thought-provoking work, from a company that clearly’s developing its own distinctive theatrical voice.' Paul Cockburn Broadway Baby

Fresh from victory at Bannockburn military necessity draws the armies of Robert the Bruce to intervene in Ireland. But is this liberation or conquest?
Robert dispatches his brother Edward across the sea, there to be proclaimed ri Erenn, High King of Ireland.
As famine strikes and decisive victory proves elusive, Edward reigns bloodily in a land broken by war; where the boundary between enemy and ally is tragically blurred.
The Bruce in Ireland is a blood drenched fictionalised march through the Bruce’s Irish intervention where honour is a cheap coin and war for war’s sake in brutally considered.

​The Bruce in Ireland
by Ben Blow
Directed by Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir
Sound design by Tom Oakes

Cast:
Gerry Kielty
Kirsty Eila McIntyre
Chris Allan
Matt Jebb
Philip Rainford
Douglas Garry

Please note that the performance has strong language and violence throughout.

'The Bruce campaign makes ideal fodder for a play like this, and Blow’s script allows it to be clearly and boldly portrayed.' ​**** Robert Peacock TVbomb

'Director Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir sets all this in the bleakest of landscapes in a meditation on war which sounds at times like a grittily stylised Bruce for the Game of Thrones generation.'  ​Neil Cooper, The Herald