The Homecoming of Joseph Grace – a life unmoored by war and exile

A ferry terminal in steely morning light forms the spare setting for Deirdre Kinahan’s drama of return. A man in overcoat, suit and hat clutches a suitcase and considers his next move; in the 50 years since he left Ireland on a misguided impulse, Joseph Grace has never been back.

As a bus pulls up he hesitates and turns away, assailed by memories, and Louise Lowe’s atmospheric staging for Once Off Productions unfolds a reckoning with a past swept up in 20th-century Europe’s upheavals. His life is traced from the Western Front to Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade of war prisoners in Germany in 1915 and on to the rise of Hitler.

Kinahan, who has previously dramatised the Irish revolutionary years using archival sources, writes acutely about the complex loyalties of Irishmen serving in the British army in the first world war. The play’s historical research, however, is less well absorbed overall.

Ireland

joseph grace, deirdre kinahan, louise lowe, once off, roger casement, irish brigade, western front, wwi, irish soldiers, british army