Abstract

A five-act play, Elegy for Daughters is the story of Margaret Keane, the orphan daughter of an Irish émigrée. Ten years after her mother's drowning, Margaret learns that a theatre troupe in Galway is staging a play that her mother wrote before she left Ireland to go to Canada. Completely disconnected from her roots, and uncertain as to whether or not her mother committed suicide, Margaret flies to Ireland with the hope of obtaining a sense of closure when she hears her mother tell a story, one last time. In Galway, Margaret stays at The Star of the Sea , a boarding house-cum-bed and breakfast on Nun's Island. There she meets a cast of characters with stories and histories as unlikely as her own; indeed, with stories that shed light on her own mythical lineage. The action takes place in the recently renovated kitchen at The Star of the Sea , where a desk lamp functions as the family hearth, and folk gather 'round for accounts of local history and family legend. Elegy for Daughters questions chance, the supernatural, and notions of blind faith. As Lugh the lodger remarks in the final act, "There's no harm in looking at things upside down as well as right-side up. Sure none of us knows which way 'round things are meant to be hanging."