The Love Hungry Farmer - Seamus O'Rourke

What to Expect

Seamus O’Rourke brings his solo staging of John B. Keane’s The Love Hungry Farmer to Birr Theatre and Arts Centre at 8pm on Saturday 19 September 2026. Keane’s play centres on John Bosco McLaine, described as a man who has never lain down with a woman but has had romantic blood pulsing through his veins all his life. Across the evening McLaine takes the audience through his search for an ideal companion: the near misses, the matchmaking, and the slow accumulation of years spent on a farm with only himself for company.

O’Rourke is an award-winning writer, director and actor who has toured this production widely through Irish arts centres, and the Birr billing promises an uproarious evening of laughter, love, hope and desire. The piece sits in the same territory as Keane’s better known stage work, rural Irish life played for comedy with real loneliness running under it. It is a single-actor show on a sparse stage, so the weight of the night falls on the storytelling rather than on scenery or a large cast. Birr Theatre is a restored Victorian house dating from 1888, and its 220 seats put the audience close to the stage, which suits a monologue of this kind.

Good to Know

• Date: Saturday 19 September 2026
• Time: 8pm
• Venue: Birr Theatre and Arts Centre, Oxmantown Mall, Birr
• Price: €22.50 plus booking fees
• Booking: online through the Birr Theatre Ticketsolve box office, or by phone on 057 912 2911, Monday to Friday 1pm to 5:30pm
• Availability: tickets were reported as limited when the date was announced, so book ahead
• Format: solo performance by Seamus O’Rourke, written by John B. Keane

Getting There

Birr Theatre and Arts Centre is on Oxmantown Mall, a Georgian terrace a short walk from Emmet Square and Birr’s Main Street. Drivers reach the town on the N52 from Tullamore and Nenagh or the N62 from Roscrea and Athlone. Birr has no railway station, so a car or a Bus Eireann coach service is the practical way in from outside the town. Public car parking is available around the town centre within a few minutes of the theatre, and the pubs and restaurants on Main Street are close enough for a pre-show meal.