Mundy Scheme / Brian Friel

Fifty years after it has won its independence Ireland is on its knees. The government is hanging by a thread, the Taoiseach is working from home, the Minister for Finance returns from Switzerland empty handed and, after he’s gone missing, the Minister for External Affairs appears with a scheme that will save the country. He has secured the commitment of a Texan businessman to purchase tracts of the West of Ireland to be sold as the final resting place for sentimental Irish people living abroad. The modest proposal of Brian Friel’s hilarious and scathing satire prompts wheeling, dealing and double dealing as control succumbs to corruption. The salvation of Ireland is immediately beset by hunger for personal profit. The Mundy Scheme, a long suppressed drama and a precursor of The Communication Cord, is too readily recognizable more than forty years after its first production.