The documentary:
Patrick McCabe author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast On Pluto is used to seeing his work translated onto the screen. The challenge of Play Next Door is a new experience that appealed to Patrick. He would travel to a location, live there for a month and write an original television play set in the house where he lived. It was completely up to him what the play would be about. Patrick’s only request was that he would go to the home of Country and Western music, Ireland’s Nashville, Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan, 25 miles from his own hometown of Clones.
The production sent Pat to a new unoccupied mansion on the outskirts of town. The obvious story would be boom and bust but this is Patrick McCabe so don’t expect the obvious. John Martin’s documentary follows Patrick on a journey to finding the story for the play. Along the way Patrick ends up sharing a song with country legend Big Tom in his sitting room and the clues to what will eventually be in the play start to emerge. The documentary is an intimate portrayal of one of Ireland’s great writers and how he approaches his work.
The Play:
If Those Lips – An Original Television Play By Patrick McCabe.
The writer was given a new mansion in the country, on the outskirts of Castleblaney, the home of country music in Co. Monaghan. This was to be the setting for Patrick McCabe’s Play Next Door.
Directed by Charlie McCarthy, produced by Gary Flood and starring Ian McElhinney, Olwen Fouere, Nika McGuigan and Stephen Cromwell, If Those Lips brings the past and present of lives on the border colliding together in one night.