John P O’Sullivan surveys Mick O’Dea’s paintings of characters from the playwright Seán O’Casey’s plays
Henrietta Street in Dublin 1, a wide and cobbled street that leads up to the Kings Inns archway, was one of the first grand Georgian building projects to adorn the capital. However, its houses went from homes for aristocrats in the 18th century to infested tenements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each shared by up to a hundred people. This was the environment in which Seán O’Casey grew up in nearby Mountjoy Square, and buildings such as this formed the backdrop to his trilogy: The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).
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