Play looks at Cork though Shandon's eyes

Have you ever looked up at Shandon Bells and wondered if the iconic Cork landmark was looking back down at you?

A play written during Covid lockdown by Cork playwright Ger FitzGibbon is finally about to be presented as it was originally intended.

‘The Four Faced Liar’ was originally conceived and written as “a play for voices” to be performed before, and interact with, a live audience.

With theatres shut down by the time the play was completed, it instead became part of the Everyman podcast series of productions ‘Play It By Ear’.

In early 2025, the RTÉ Radio Drama Department did a radio production of the piece in heavily edited form.

With the eyes of Shandon as a guide, FitzGibbon’s play takes the audience on a journey through the night-world of Cork, through the hidden streams that flow under the city, and through the dreams and desires that flow through its people, whether past or present.

The Polish cashier in a builders’ suppliers; the one-legged soldier in Flea Park; the sixteen year old with a crush on her new online friend; the shy, stammering carpenter with romantic inclinations; the undertaker with an unexpected fantasy life: these are just five of the many characters encountered on this night-walk through Cork’s physical, psychic, and historic landscape.

FitzGibbon said: “Some of those who’ve read the script describe it as like a love-song to the city. And maybe it is that, but perhaps in the way that ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ is a kind of love-song to New York. In my head, it’s like one of those really big family weddings or family funerals, where you bump into a load of people, there are different stories going on around every corner, different generations, different voices, mingling, singing, arguing. And where you are very conscious of the ghosts of previous generations. But it’s also about the way the city is defined by the river, the way the river flows through, and around and under us, shaping our landscape and our consciousness.”