Exploring abuse: Michael Harding’s The Kiss

“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday (May 2). The article, by the Sunday Tribune’s Ali Bracken, told the story of the serial abuse of children by the California-based Irish priest, Oliver O’Grady – in his own words.

It was “the affection of the hugging,” that O’Grady particularly enjoyed; it “awakened within me urges to be affectionate in return.” When an altar boy he liked, aged ten or eleven, arrived at the sacristy, he said, “I might go over and give him a hug, and if he responded by allowing me to hug him and offered to hug me in return, that sort of gave me permission to continue at that point.”

Irish theatre, child abuse, and The Kiss

“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday. The article, by the Sunday Tribune’s Ali Bracken, told the story of the serial abuse of children by the California-based Irish priest, Oliver O’Grady – in his own words.

It was “the affection of the hugging,” that O’Grady particularly enjoyed; it “awakened within me urges to be affectionate in return.” When an altar boy he liked, aged ten or eleven, arrived at the sacristy, he said, “I might go over and give him a hug, and if he responded by allowing me to hug him and offered to hug me in return, that sort of gave me permission to continue at that point.”

Review: Christ Deliver Us! by Thomas Kilroy

Thomas Kilroy’s new play for the Abbey is an awkward work, marred by obviousness and by the tired, cumbersome conceit of relying on twentysomethings to play fifteen-year-olds.

And yet it is also a foundation myth for 21st century Ireland, eschewing the minor notes of nuance in favour of the major chords of sweeping social drama.

Kilroy’s play tells of the travails of a group of teenagers in a small Irish town in the 1950s. The boys get lathered by the Christian Brothers, the girls beaten by their parents; and all are terribly afraid of their bodies.

(Aaron Monaghan excels as the most mature of the young men while, opposite him, Aoife Duffin has moments of startling brilliance.)