Madam, - In his review of The Tinker's Curse, Peter Crawley seems disappointed that there are structural echoes of Brian Friel's Faith Healer in the play.
There are in fact echoes and references to Friel (structurally), Beckett (visually) and, most particularly, Yeats, in the text.
I took these three icons of 20th-century Irish theatre in order to create the enclosed template within which the Traveller characters of the play are contained in the telling of their story.
It was an attempt to mirror in form the precise nexus between Traveller culture and the wider society. Traveller culture resembles settled society so much that it is forever impossible for Travellers either to possess their own separate identity, or to be anything other than marginal in the settled community.
In The Tinker's Curse, Travellers have nowhere to go. They are confined in a space not their own. They can do nothing but try to tell their unique story in the cage of another culture's aesthetic.
Clearly I failed to get that point across, but as theatre is ultimately stories that delight an audience, I am consoled that The Tinker's Curse is doing so, effectively, even if that is entirely due to the stunning performances of the three actors involved. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL HARDING, Mullingar, Co Westmeath.