The Cripple of Inishmaan

Written by one of the world’s most celebrated young playwrights, this ingeniously funny, suspenseful, and moving play centers on Billy, a disabled boy living on a barren island off the Irish coast during the 1930s. Billy’s parents died at sea when he was a baby, and he has been raised by two soft-hearted foster-aunts. Relentlessly ridiculed by the other islanders, “Cripple Billy” seizes a chance to escape his confined life on Inishmaan when an American film crew arrives to make a documentary.

SYNOPSIS

Excitement hits the island of Inishmore and the sleepy village of Inishmaan when the local gossip, Johnnypateeenmike, announces that a Hollywood film crew is coming to film a movie on a nearby island. No one wants to go more than the orphaned Cripple Billy. After a life of teasing from his neighbors like the tempestuous Slippy Helen and her brother Bartley, Cripple Billy longs to escape the island and his life with his well-meaning but crazy foster aunts. When he sets sail for the film set to chase his dreams, he finds answers to questions he never could have found in Inishmaan, but finds that those same answers lead him home.