The Clearing

The Phoenix Players presents The Clearing, by Helen Edmundson.
The play deals with a fascinating yet brutal period in the 17th Century Ireland when the English enacted a law to uproot all of the Irish and push them west to Connaught, an area of Ireland already suffering famine and one of the poorest and most inhospitable areas in Ireland. Madeleine and Robert Preston have just become proud new parents. However, it is a time of religious and political turmoil, and she is Irish, he is English. As Cromwell and Parliament instigate their policy of ethnic cleansing known as “to Hell or Connaught”, the Prestons find their world turned upside down. Their story is a tale of love and passion, treachery and tragedy; the politics of the day taking on a very human persona.