The Saviour at Manoa Valley Theatre

As The Saviour opens, Máire Sullivan sits in bed the morning of her 70th birthday, savoring a cigarette. Widowed after being married for 42 years, she has just fallen passionately in love with a relative stranger and feels more alive than she has for as long as she can remember. Her euphoria is short-lived, however, when a surprise visit from her son brings an unwelcome revelation that threatens to cut her newly discovered happiness short.

Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan’s brilliant new play uses wit and humor to track a radical shift in Ireland’s political, social and religious life.

Kinahan has recently said: “America looks like it is now heading into the quagmire of legislative religiosity from which Ireland is only now escaping. It’s a dark dark place. I wish you luck.”