Poguemahone
Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe
Staring Aaron Monaghan & Directed by Padraic McIntyre
Follow Dan Fogarty’s anarchic tale as he pieces together the history of his family. How his parents and Aunt Nano are exiled from a small Irish village to the hard immigrant life in England. How Dan and his sister Una live in a hippie squat haunted by vindictive ghosts in Kilburn in the early 1970s. And how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are unspooling memories.
And what of Dan himself? Who is he really? What is his role as the story becomes stranger and more sinister?
Poguemahone is a wild, shape-shifting epic from one of modern Ireland’s greatest writers. A wild, free-verse monologue steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before.
Staring Aaron Monaghan and directed by Padraic McIntyre, the team that brought you ‘Emerald Germs of Ireland’ re-unites for this intimate Ojus Tour of Cavan.
You’d be a right lug to miss it!
Meet our Team
Aaron Monaghan
Actor
Aaron trained at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Trinity College Dublin. He is the Artistic Director of Livin’ Dred Theatre which is based in Cavan.
Aaron’s previous work in The Abbey includes The Cave, She Stoops to Conquer, Translations, Romeo & Juliet, The Shaughraun, Arrah na Pogue, Christ Deliver Us!, 16 Possible Glimpses, King Lear, The Wolf of Winter, I Do Not Like Thee Dr Fell, Finders Keepers, The Burial At Thebes.
He is a member of Druid Theatre’s Ensemble, having worked with the company for over 20 years on dozens of acclaimed productions such as The Shaughraun, The Synge Cycle, The Murphy Trilogy, The Shakespeare Cycle, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Richard III, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, O’Casey’s Dublin Plays, and he directed their production of The Cavalcaders.
His film and tv roles include The Banshees of Inisherin, Kathleen is Here, Float Like A Butterfly, The Other Side of Sleep, Assassins Creed, The Foreigner, Maze, ’71, Pan, Love/Hate, Clean Break, Vikings, The Tudors, LSD:73, The Vanishing Triangle, Croí, Simon, Redemption Of A Rogue as well three seasons of Hidden Assets.
His directing credits include the award-nomiated Charlie’s A Clepto, and minefield by Clare Monnelly, Hitting The Mark by Cillian O’Gairbhi, From All Sides by Lee Coffey and Walking The Road by Dermot Bolger. For Livin’ Dred he directed Trad by Mark Doherty, Patrick Kavanagh’s Tarry Flynn and Danti-Dan by Gina Moxley, as well as and The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge.
Screen-Directing credits include short films After, Cheer, Departure, and Ghost Light (which won awards at Fastnet Film Festival and Offshore Film Festival), as well as Charlie’s A Clepto and Slice The Thief, which were streamed as part of Pumphouse Presents.
He has received numerous awards including The Lucille Lortel Award, Garden State Film Festival Award, Richard Harris Film Festival Award, European Film Festival Award, The Irish Times Theatre Award, The Manchester Evening News Award and The OBIE for Outstanding Performance.
Padraic McIntyre
Director
Padraic is a native of Bailieborough, Co. Cavan and trained as an actor at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. He has an MA in Theatre Studies from DCU.
Padraic is currently Venues Manager at Ramor & Townhall Arts Centres in Cavan. Padraic was Artistic Director of Livin’ Dred Theatre Company for who he directed 15 professional shows.
Padraic is the author and director of The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down which has sold out venues around the country and played The Olympia Theatre, Dublin in February 2026 for a record-breaking 15th Year.
Patrick McCabe
Writer & Author
Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, Co. Monaghan.
Writing Career: novels published include The Dead School, The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto, Mondo Desperado, Emerald Germs of Ireland, The Holy City and Call Me the Breeze.
More recently, he has published Heartland and The Big Yaroo. Something of a departure after that, in that it took the form of a 600-page monologue, was his next work Poguemahone, which he describes himself as an insurgent, psychedelic folktale, was well received both at home and abroad. His current novel, Goldengrove, set in the murky world of doublethink and espionage, could not be more different – a Saxon noir of splintered mirrors and deadly intrigue.
He has written extensively for both radio and tv: including the radio comedy series Emerald Germs of Ireland, broadcast in 2000. Films include The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto, both directed by Neil Jordan.
McCabe’s installation in Moli, Dublin, on the writer Brendan Behan, was mounted in 2024, to considerable acclaim. His work on Patrick Kavanagh, presented at the Cork Midsummer Festival 2026, is similar in tone and approach.
He is married with two grown-up children and three grandchildren, to the artist Margot Quinn. He lives in what he likes to describe as ‘the golden city of Clones’ and is a member of Aosdána.
Performance Dates
