In April, Hilary Fannin’s radical adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun will premiere on the Abbey Theatre stage. Augusta Gregory and Maxim Gorky wrote at a time of profound political change from different corners of Europe. Our mutual history is rooted in those events and their aftermath, in the troubled century that brings us to the present.

Children of the Sun is the story of how a small family, their collection of friends and one eccentric stranger distract, entertain and enrage each other at a moment of crisis. Meanwhile, unseen beyond their fragile walls, their world is being reshaped by unstoppable forces.

We are all living through a period of huge change. This play offers reflections of ourselves in its characters and to consider if our collective belief in science, God or art, can help or hinder us. It is a play about how we survive without the benefit of hindsight, about how we try to stay afloat in a world saturated in uncertainty.

Developed in association with the Theatre Royal Waterford.