Reflecting on her career in acting she says: ‘I think acting gives people up – I don’t know if people give up acting ... As a female of a certain age there is a dearth of work.’ [9] However the time spent rehearsing plays by Tom MacIntyre, Dermot Bolger and Michael Harding in the Peacock Theatre inspired her to do more than just appear on stage, ‘I was in the room when they were building plays; when they were writing. Theatre’s very collaborative, and I became very fascinated with that process. And then eventually I started writing myself.’ [10] Motifs from her childhood are frequently revisited and reconfigured in her work, but as a writer Fannin is primarily interested in ‘her generation of Irish women ... those who tried to push beyond the limitations of patriarchy but who get caught up anyway in the aspic of domesticity, childbirth and financial dependency.’ [11] Her plays are full of ideas but a recurring criticism is that her characters seem to function as vehicles for sharply written, often cutting commentary at the expense of dramatic cohesion – in a review of Famished Castle, Peter Crawley remarks that her protagonists have a tendency to be ‘depthless ciphers, delivering interchangeably lofty remarks.’ [12]
Theatre
Mackerel Sky (Bush Theatre, 1997). A comedy of familial dysfunction, the play takes place in a Dublin seaside village where the Brazil family nervously await the arrival of the bailiffs. Abandoned by their seafaring father, glamorous mother Mamie, is trying to revive her career as a singer in order to make ends meet. Youngest daughter Stephanie is in thrall to the nuns; while older sister Madeleine has managed to secure a six-month supply of the contraceptive pill in exchange for a fiver and a pair of turquoise hot pants; and only brother Jack is at sea both literally and metaphorically. Meanwhile, gun-toting grandmother Tom, embittered, and suffering from dementia, is preparing for an armed stand-off. Set in 1970's ‘Catholic Ireland’ the play gives a defiant two fingers to conformity; where the easy way out is avoided at all costs.
Receiving its Irish Premiere with Waterford's Red Kettle Theatre Company in 1999, the reviews were modest: ‘The play is well worth seeing and is the first attempt at theatre by someone who obviously has a talent and a feel for words’ [13] ‘Hilary Fannin’s first play abounds with promise unfulfilled in its brief 90 minutes. Bristling with ideas, it splutters with glib domestic comedy.’ [14]
Sleeping Around (Paines Plough, 1998). An explicit reimagining of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde ( Reigen ) the play was co-written with Mark Ravenhill, Abi Morgan and Stephen Greenhorn. Unlike Schnitzler, who sought to dissect society by examining a series of sexual encounters as they happen across the social classes, Sleeping Around is much more concerned with ‘the deeply human need to connect with others.’ [15]
Reviews in the British press fixated on the fragmented nature of the piece, however Rude Guerrilla's 2002 production in California was met with almost universal acclaim, with the LA Times claiming, ‘Like David Hare’s 1998 counterpart The Blue Room , Sleeping Around charts a coital round robin with each new partner carrying forward to the next coupling, coming full circle by the finale. Unlike Blue Room, however Sleeping probes the emotional recesses of its characters, harvesting more humour and sexual voltage than Hare’s socioeconomic emphasis achieved.’ [16]
Doldrum Bay (Peacock Theatre, 2003). Four characters drift aimlessly through their middle class privilege. Magda is conflicted by imminent death of her terminally ill artist father – the man whose infidelities have led to her mother's suicide. Her husband Francis has quit his job in advertising to write a great Irish novel but seems more concerned with picking up impressionable young millennials. Chick, his friend and former colleague, now exposed by Francis's absence from the agency, has one last chance to redeem himself with a campaign to rebrand the Christian Brothers in seven words. While Louise, Chick's overly medicated wife, realises that an unexpected pregnancy can bring new meaning to her life.
Undoubtedly ambitious, reviews for the play were mixed: ‘It's meandering, pretentious, disconnected, and presumably intended as a satire on modern Irish mores’; [17] ‘Fannin doesn’t manage to tie up all the themes and ideas she packs into the play, but she has written compelling characters and some wonderfully entertaining comic dialogue’; [18] ‘The wit is barbed and cuts deep ... it’s refreshing to come across a play that isn’t afraid to put the boot into Ireland’s clerical past.’ [19] This willingness to confront Ireland's religious history could still provoke hostility – annoyed by the anti-Catholic subtext, a member of the audience at a post-reading discussion in 2002 told the author that he hoped the play would ‘sink without trace.’ [20] As an interrogation of male angst during the economic ‘boom years’ the play has also attracted academic interest: Prof. Brian Singleton of Trinity College Dublin commenting that ‘Fannin here, presents a world in which male authority is at the point of collapse. And she permits it to collapse, but not as a spectacle that might further embolden and resurrect its authority. This authority simply disappears.’ [21]
Phaedra (Rough Magic, 2010) was a collaboration between Fannin and the composer Ellen Cranitch. A darkly witty reworking of Racine’s Phèdre set in a financially buoyant Ireland that has become both cynical and corrupt; a place where wealth is now valued above integrity and where women have become hyper-sexualised. [22] Phaedra has only married Theseus, a bullying tycoon, for money and influence; and stepson Hippolytus, the true object of her affection, is as much a victim for his lack of material interest as he is of the vindictiveness of those around him.
The play opened at the Project Arts Centre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival and the production was met with widespread acclaim: ‘The line-by-line writing in Hilary Fannin’s script is wonderful: irreverent, deliciously bawdy and bang up to date'; [23] ‘The storyline is ancient Greek, but the dialogue sizzles with crude but funny one-liners.’ [24] Hoping it would be picked up by a British company, Michael Billington described it as an ‘utterly compelling piece about today’s Ireland. This it became clear, was a society in which ... the ostentatious wealth of the “Celtic Tiger” years proved no more than a hollow sham.’ [25]
The Famished Castle (Rough Magic, 2015). Considered Fannin's least successful work it sees Nat and Angie, former lovers who meet in a snowbound airport, briefly rekindle their romance. Taking place after the economic crash, key moments from their relationship are revisited in a series of tableau – including an outlandish centrepiece in a seafood restaurant with Nat's warring parents, in which old traumas are served up alongside the main course.
Ridiculed for their lack of chemistry, one critic described the two leads as, ‘The most boring couple to have ever ripped each other’s clothes off at the theatre.’ [26] More damningly though was that the play was considered underdeveloped and incoherent: ‘It is abysmally constructed, its plotline and motivation are indiscernible, and its characters are plastic cut-outs'; [27] ‘The writing is often sharp and the plot never less than interesting. However, some awkwardly-written timeline changes disturb the flow of the narrative.’ [28]
