Playwright Una McKevitt introduces Fair Deal, her 'fast-moving dark comedy with a little horror thrown in' opening on the Peacock Stage at the Abbey Theatre this February.
When I began writing Fair Deal, I wanted to explore the quiet, often invisible forces that shape our lives — the obligations we inherit, the ways we care for one another, and the unspoken hierarchies that emerge inside families. I'm interested in how both power and responsibility can become identity, and how love and duty, when intertwined, can both sustain and constrain us.
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Listen: Una McKevitt and director Conall Morrison joined Rick in studio for RTÉ Arena
Besides family, some other very Irish precocupations appear in the play. Conversations about care and housing are everywhere — in homes, in politics, in our collective imagination. I wanted to reflect that reality without turning the play into commentary. It’s not a lesson or a manifesto; it’s an observation, an attempt to reflect patterns we all recognise, even if we don’t always name them aloud.
I'm interested in how both power and responsibility can become identity, and how love and duty, when intertwined, can both sustain and constrain us.
The impulse behind Fair Deal came from noticing the small, often unspoken ways people give themselves away for others — and the ways that society, in its structures and expectations, quietly rewards endurance over attention, appearances over intimacy. It's also about power, who has it and who wields it. What they demand and the damage they do. How we hurt each other in ways that can be both terrible and funny, theatrical and human.
My hope is that audiences will leave with a sense of recognition for the characters and for how family obligation and the pursuit of freedom are more entangled than we sometimes realise. I hope it says something about the complexities and contradictions of being born into family structures and hierarchies that shape and in turn structure us. For better or worse.
Fair Deal is on the Peacock Stage at The Abbey Theatre from February 11th - March 28th - find out more here
