The Home Place

In the long, hot August of 1878, the widowed Christopher Gore, his son David, and their housekeeper Margaret, with whom they are both in love, reside at The Lodge, the Gore family home in Donegal. Christopher's cousin, Dr. Richard Gore, arrives with the intention of pursuing a Darwin-inspired scientific theory. By measuring the craniums of the indigenous Irish, he hopes to crack the genetic code of the indigenes, demonstrating their (inferior) place in the natural order.

Set in the era of uncertainty at the dawn of The Home Rule movement which would begin to restore self-government to the Irish, Brian Friel's THE HOME PLACE depicts the aftermath of Dr. Gore's "experiment" as deep animosity is ignited among the suspicious villagers of Ballybeg.