Closing Time (NHB Modern Plays)

McCafferty's break-through play, a tender and comic portrait of love, dignity and emotional damage. Vera is feisty but fading, Ronnie is washed up and permanently half-drunk. Together they run a grubby pub/hotel in present-day Belfast. It is a refuge for the assorted regulars who wash up there, as well as its rickety owners. Today is a day like many before, turning groggily into a night which might erode everyone's ability to cope with each other, or themselves. 'McCafferty's writing is wonderfully attentive to the beauty of the real world - the mundane and common place has a poetic elegance which he draws with stunning accuracy and every one of the diverse characters is fully and neatly formed' - London Theatre Guide

Born in 1961, Owen McCafferty lives with his wife and three children in Belfast. His work includes Quietly (Abbey Theatre, Dublin and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, 2013); an adaptation of JP Miller's Days of Wine and Roses (Donmar Warehouse, London, 2005); Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre, London, 2003); Shoot the Crow (Druid, Galway, 1997; Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2003); Mojo Mickybo (Kabosh, Belfast, 1998); No Place Like Home (Tinderbox, Belfast, 2001) and Closing Time (National Theatre, 2002). Scenes from the Big Picture won the John Whiting Award, the Meyer Whitworth Award and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2003 making McCafferty the first writer to win all three awards in a single year.