The Absence of Women

- he hadn't forgotten i was there - he just didn't care whether i was there or not - it would've been better him forgetting rather than not caring at all Gerry and Iggy face the ends of their lives in a London hostel. As they drift from present concerns - the funeral of an old drinking partner, the relative sizes of their swollen livers, tube routes, street names, God and the lure of Belfast - to remembering ghosts from long ago, we catch a poignant glimpse of what might have been. Owen McCafferty's The Absence of Women, heartrending and darkly comic in turn, premiered at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, in February 2010.

Over the past twenty-five years Owen McCafferty's plays have been performed worldwide and have won numerous awards. Previous work includes Titanic: Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, 1912 (MAC, Belfast); The Absence of Women (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, and Tricycle Theatre, London); Days of Wine and Roses (Donmar Theatre, London); Closing Time (National Theatre, London); Shoot the Crow (Druid, Galway); Mojo Mickybo (Kabosh, Belfast); Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre, London), which won the Meyer-Whitworth, John Whiting and Evening Standard Awards; Quietly (Abbey Theatre, Dublin), which won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Play; Death of a Comedian (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Lyric Theatre, Belfast, and Soho Theatre, London); Fire Below (A War of Words) (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, and Abbey Theatre, Dublin) and Agreement (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, commissioned by MGC). Owen's first screenplay Ordinary Love won Best Picture 2020 at the Irish Film & Television Awards.