THE MAGIC GLASSES

ABOUT

​

Bewley's Cafe Theatre is proud to present...​

THE MAGIC GLASSES

by George Fitzmaurice

​

The year is 1913, but like a contemporary phone-addicted teenager, Jaymoney Shanahan spends his days up in the loft staring into his magic glasses, hearing strange music and seeing incredible visions.

His distraught parents finally call in the fabled Morgan Quille, hoping he can cure this incurable of his wicked ways. Is Quille a genuine faith healer or a fake of a quack doctor? What will happen when a violent exorcism is attempted in this Kerry country kitchen?

 

With riotous humour, language of astonishing richness, and the highest of hi-jinx, The Magic Glasses is a mini-masterpiece by this under-celebrated playwright, a Kerry magician of singular genius, George Fitzmaurice. 

 

Don't miss the rare chance to see this glorious gem of a play.

​

Duration: 60 minutes

Age Guidance: 14+

​

George Fitzmaurice was known for his sharp wit, unique dialogue, and rich characters that harnessed the anarchic energies of Irish folk culture. He wrote plays that are as enchanting and startling as they are hilarious, creating a theatre of wild magic.

Born just outside Listowel in 1877, Fitzmaurice developed an early fascination with the Irish language and literature - the dialogue in his plays is a delightfully multi-coloured Hiberno-English - but he combined this with a delight in folk traditions and a love of musical hall to create some of the most entertaining and stylistically freewheeling plays in the Irish canon. 

​

Fintan O'Toole in his preface to Fiona Brennan's recent biography of the playwright, writes of Fitzmaurice and seeing his play The Dandy Dolls:

'He became the great lost soul of twentieth century Irish theatre. The Dandy Dolls reminded us of the zest and tang of his language, the breadth of his imagination and his mastery of a concentrated theatrical form in which the verbal and the visual engage in a fandango of terror and delight. It is a theatre unfolding through poetry and movement, wicked humour and startling violence, a theatre of delight and vague but profound terror. 

Fitzmaurice's world, in which reality is drenched with fantasies, images and inventions is even more recognisable now in in the media-saturated twenty first century. The magic glasses of consumerism fit even more snugly before our eyes than they did on the faces of our ancestors in the early twentieth century.  This is why Fitzmaurice seems such a contemporary writer. There is even, for us, a kind of pay off for the long years of neglect in that actors and directors, as well as audiences, can approach Fitzmaurice now almost as a new writer, a wild, mind-blowing punk of a young genius who throws down exciting challenges of staging and interpretation.'

 

Don't miss this chance to see The Magic Glasses, discover the joys of this lost master's work and revel in his wild and wonderful dramatic imaginings.

 

BOOKING INFORMATION
June 22nd - July 18th 2026
There will be a SOIRÉE SHOW at 7pm on Friday, July 3rd, 2026
Mon-Sat at 1pm (doors open at 12.50pm)
Tickets: Low-price Mon/Tues €10, Wed/Thurs €12, Fri/Sat €15.
SOIRÉE Tickets : €15
BOOKING:  www.bewleyscafetheatre.com

​

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible via the main Grafton Street entrance with a lift to the second floor.