By Kenneth Jones
26 Jun 2006

Anna Manahan in a scene from Sisters at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
photo by Neil Hanna

Sisters, a new solo play written by Declan Hassett specifically for Tony Award winner Anna Manahan, will make its New York City premiere Sept. 12-Oct. 15 at 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan.

Manahan played the monstrous Irish ma, Mag, in The Beauty Queen of Leenane on Broadway, and won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play.

"Anna Manahan creates two extraordinary portraits of sisters Martha and Mary, in two acts that outline the resentments, regrets and secrets of these two women whose lives have taken very different turns," according to production notes. "Set in '50s Ireland, Sisters is a story of disappointed love, brutal passion and the horrific consequences of two women's lives."

Hassett is former arts editor of the Irish Examiner and author of a series of books, "All Our Yesterdays," "The Way We Were" and "Passing Through."

Sisters premiered at the Everyman Theatre in Cork, Ireland and played 2005's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It earned a rave from Benedict Nightingale of the Times of London.

This will be the New York premiere, but not the American premiere: Sisters played at the Colorado Festival of World Theater in July 2005. The Manhattan run is a co-production of the Everyman Theatre and Colorado Festival of World Theater. The show is currently running at the Civic Theatre Tallaght in Dublin.

This will mark 81-year-old Manahan's second time on a New York stage since she was celebrated in 1998 as the mother in Martin McDonagh's Beauty Queen of Leenane. She was also Tony nominated as Best Featured Actress in a Play for her work in the 1968 Broadway production of Brian Friel's Lovers. In 2002, Off-Broadway, she appeared The Machine Theatre Company production of John B. Keane's The Matchmaker, presented by The Irish Repertory Theatre in association with Matthew Gale.

Visit www.59E59.org.