Report Paul Murphy
The unusual setting of the old Wilkinstown railway station on the Navan to Kingscourt branch line was chosen for the staging of a play – For the Love of Ledwidge – based on the connection between the Slane poet and local woman Lizzie Healy. The piece of open-air theatre was especially written for the Siamsa Glas by Wilkinstown woman Sharon Carroll and held on the platform of the railway station.
The cast and large audience were as unlucky with the weather as Ledwidge was in his wooing of Lizzie – the rain bucketed down shortly after the performance got under way. Gamely, the cast members decided that the show must go on. There were readings from both Ledwidge’s poetry and his letters to Lizzie. In a letter sent to Lizzie three weeks before his death Ledwidge asked her to “send me a flower from the bog plucked specially for me.”
The arrival of the cast, the show went on despite the inclement weather
…and the rain came down, but spirits were high.
In character, For the Love of Ledwidge on the railway station at Wilkinson, a throwback to bygone days.
