Rory Mullarkey won the 2014 George Devine Award for his play The Wolf from the Door and was the recipient of the Pinter Commission in 2014 - an award given annually by Lady Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter's widow, to support a new commission at the Royal Court. He was the Royal Court's writer-on-attachment in 2010 and has been closely associated with the theatre's international work, translating Russian-language plays from Latvia, Russia and Ukraine, including Aleksey Scherbak's Remembrance Day as part of the 2011 International Season and for a number of staged readings. His first full-length play, Cannibals, opened at the Royal Exchange Manchester in 2013, where he became the youngest playwright to have his work performed on their main stage. In 2014, Rory Mullarkey won the Harold Pinter Playwriting Prize, the George Devine Award (jointly with Alice Birch) and the James Tait Black Prize for Drama for his play Cannibals, published by Methuen Drama.
The Private misses the farm. The Captain dreams of painting. The Corporal relishes the fight.
And a hundred years later, The Woman seeks to understand.
1916 - In the darkness of the French night, three young soldiers, a private, a corporal and a captain, cross no man's land towards the enemy trench. Stealth is key to their survival and so they walk in silence, with nothing to communicate the thoughts in their heads save for the barest of gestures.
2014 - A woman goes on a day trip to visit the touristic monuments commemorating the Battle of the Somme at Vimy Ridge and the Loghnagar Crater - the site of a mine explosion that killed over 6,000 people - where she encounters remembrance, restaurants and bright, themed gift shops.
Each Slow Dusk is a startling play about action, humanity, and the legacy of war. Immersing you in the reality of conflict through vivid, thrilling detail, it gives you a fresh way of thinking about war - from the past soldiers' perspective to the woman's present-day experience.
Each Slow Dusk was published to coincide with the first production and national tour of the play by Pentabus Rural Theatre Company, in autumn, 2014.