The Cairn Stones

The Cairn Stones is about love and longing, about regrets for the past and some hope for the future; it's about age and how it limits only those who would be limited by it. "In her strong but always lyrically written memory play [McGravie]... hints at the way the seeds of one's character and passions are planted in youth and tend to grow stronger in one's later years. Based loosely on events in her own life...[McGravie] has created a play in which the youthful and aging incarnations of three characters continually shadow each other. The teenage Brighid is a rebellious, relatively well-to-do girl, passionately attached to her wild island culture. Her neighbor, Shelagh, is poorer and restless in another way—hell-bent on leaving for America. Shelagh loves Brighid's half-brother, Michael, but he cannot find it in himself to leave the island. So when she decides to make the trans-Atlantic journey she enlists his best friend, Joe, who Brighid happens to love." (Chicago Sun-Times) Fifty years later and now a widow, Shelagh returns. She has never forgotten (or forgiven?) Michael. McGravie infuses her play with a sense of deja vu—a knowledge of how the past is viewed when it begins to retreat fast, moving further and further from reach.