For the purposes of the play, he has returned the area to this earlier, more natural setting. When Leonard and his girlfriend walked at Carrigogunnell, within two miles of it, the stone was surrounded by vast meadow.

Time and urbanisation have overtaken the Clough-a-Regan standing stone which now resides in the back garden of one of a row of bungalows. Now the quest turns out to have been more personal. At the time, to the casual listener, overhearing the conversation, it seemed archaeology had been the motivation. 'He's setting off to locate a standing stone somewhere in a field in Limerick,' reported Farrell, impressed by his fellow townie's urgency. It was his friend, Hugh Leonard, apparently about to embark on a mission. While playwright Bernard Farrell was being interviewed for this paper last year, the phone rang. 'A mother sees a daughter as a daughter, just as a daughter sees her mother as a mother.' The letter started Leonard thinking, and he knew he had to return to the place. It is about the way mothers and daughters relate uneasily to each other as people with sexual feelings. The play is not a conventional love story. However, the following summer he returned and the couple met up again. 'Distance seemed to defeat our relationship.' As a young man Leonard holidayed one summer in this part of Co Limerick, where he walked out with the woman mentioned above, then a young girl. 'Without it there would be no play,' says Leonard.Ĭarrigogunnell is a massive basalt rock on which stands the ruins of the 14th-century fortress known as O'Connell's Rock. she said that she had a very strong sense of your presence with her there where you had walked together when you were young.' The letter inspired Leonard's new play, Love in the Title, which opened last night at the Abbey Theatre. I remember walking with her at Carrigogunnell beneath the ruins there one lovely summer's evening. she did not speak of you very often, of course, but when she did it was with a lasting care. 'Though the connection is one of long years past we felt at home that you would like to know about Mother's death. 'I am sorry to tell you that my mother has died,' it informed him. It had been written by a stranger, the son of a girl Leonard had known years before. Just over a year ago, playwright Hugh Leonard received a letter addressing him as 'Jack' his given name.

Home before night by hugh leonard