The table is set for Denis, arriving home from Dublin where he’s studying Medicine at Trinity College – a source of enormous pride for his besotted mother and of great resentment to his five other siblings.

But when word comes that he may have failed his exams again, the final straw breaks. Threats of deportation, lawsuits, bribes and counter-bribes escalate, as the family twist the fate of their whiteheaded boy to suit themselves. Never mind about the girls.

A smash hit when it premiered at the Abbey Theatre 110 years ago, Lennox Robinson’s The Whiteheaded Boy is a raucous, high-stakes tug-of-war between a generation who will do anything to keep their standing in the town and the young, who just want to be free to do what they want to do.

Award-winning director Annie Ryan re-imagines this bawdy and bold Irish classic with a contemporary eye and a sharp feminist wink to the past. Notions abound!

To see more about the 2026 Abbey Theatre season, click here.