History Theatre / Sive

* FloweryInsults: Multiple characters. Thomasheen calls Mike "the biggest lump of a fool of an eejit of a dul amú in the seven parishes", for instance. Carthalawn's only lines are his songs, most of which are elaborate insulting curses.

* FloweryInsults: Multiple characters. Thomasheen calls Mike "the biggest fool of an eejit of a dul amú in the seven parishes", for instance. Carthalawn's only lines are his songs, most of which are elaborate insulting curses.

** Mena was raised in a poor house and knew from childhood her only route out of poverty was to marry well. She genuinely believes that marrying a rich farmer is the best thing Sive can hope for, and marrying an old man will be well worth the cost of financial security for life.
** Thomasheen Seán Rua takes a cynical attitude to love because his dreams of courting a young woman were dashed when his father committed suicide and Thomasheen had to sell his two pigs, his only financial independence, to pay for the funeral. He believes his father only did it to spite him, and his comments reveal he is deeply lonely.

* BatmanGambit: Nanna knows she can't pass Liam's letter to Sive without Mena or Thomasheen seeing, so she tells her son Mike it is merely a goodbye letter from him.

* MeaningfulName: Pats Bocock's name isn't a surname. ''Bacach'' is an Irish word that can mean both "lame" and "beggar", of which Pats is both.

* MeaningfulName: Pats Bocock's name isn't a surname. ''Bacach'" means both "lame" and "beggar", of which Pats is both.

* CrapsackWorld: Rural Kerry in the mid-Fifties is not an easy place to live, full of small farmers eking out a precarious living.

* DirtyOldMan: Pats Bocock's judgment of Seán Dóta is that he's an old man who only craves a young woman and cares not at all for Sive as a person.

''Sive'' is a {{tragedy}} by John B Keane, first performed in Listowel in 1959. The play is set in rural Kerry, and concerns the orphan Sive and the machinations of her aunt and the local matchmaker to marry her off to an elderly farmer for a gift of £200.

Work in progress

** Thomasheen Seán Rua takes a cynical attitude to love because his dreams of courting a young woman were dashed when his father committed suicide and Thomasheen had to sell his two pigs, his only financial independence, to pay for the funeral. He believes his father only did it to spite him.

** Mike spends the whole play caught between the lure of financial security and his revulsion at the thought of Sive marrying a man who was full grown when he was a child. The scales are tipped by the fact that he hates Liam Scuab, the young man Dive actually loves.

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