Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It’s June 2019 and everyone has converged on the parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.
Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with her boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own.
Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. Set across two scorching hot days in the feverish capital, Evenings and Weekends is a vivid portrait of a city and its inhabitants that announces the arrival of a vital new literary talent.
Oisín McKenna grew up in Ireland and lives in London. A 2022 London Writers Award winner and named by the Irish Times as one of the best spoken word artists in the country, Oisín has written and performed four theatre shows including an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019.
