Steven O’ Riordan is fundraising to help him complete a newly discovered but unfinished play on the Clonbanin Ambush that has been found in an attic twenty five years after the writer’s death.
The Clonbanin Ambush was written by Cork native Bill Cody, also known as Patrick Vaughan contributor to the Corkman and the initial seeds for this play were sown almost 70 years ago through his encounter with an IRA veteran. It examines the circumstances surrounding a famous IRA ambush of the War of Independence where a large party of Volunteers from Cork and Kerry ambushed a party of British army soldiers in 1921 resulting in the death of the decorated British Brigadier-General Hanway Robert Cumming.
Discovered among Bill’s papers were two copybooks of fascinating historical, dramatic and poetic material dealing with the ambush that lay incomplete at the time of Bill’s death. In this time of seismic Irish revolutionary centenaries the play deserves and demands to be finished to do justice not just to the playwright but to the men who fought and died that day at Clonbanin.
“I was given this play a few years ago by the writer’s family and over time it has slowly taken such a grip on my imagination that the time is now right to do justice to the playwright and bring this “lost” exciting piece of theatre to life.”
Read more on Steven’s project and fundraising on his GoFundMe page
Read about the Clonbanin Ambush in this an old article on Millstreet.ie:
