Crafting a musical around songs from one of the greatest songwriters of all time is a pretty daunting task but the result is a largely successful one for playwright Conor McPherson.
The story of the double Olivier and Tony award-winning West End and Broadway smash hit centres on a run-down guesthouse in 1930s America, in the middle of the Great Depression. Owners Nick and his wife, Elizabeth Laine, who has dementia, are struggling financially and unable to keep up with their mortgage repayments.
Their live-in son is a drunken would-be writer and their adopted, black daughter is pregnant and single. The guesthouse occupants are a collection of lost souls all looking to escape from their pasts and include a wrongly imprisoned boxer, a widow, an insalubrious preacher, a couple with a son with learning disabilities and a morphine taking doctor.
