Mojo Mickybo is an unsentimental portrayal of innocence betrayed by communal hatred. The play follows two friends growing up in Belfast – a friendship that at first is immune to the sectarian violence taking place around them, but which nonetheless is ultimately destroyed by it. Set in Belfast over the summer of 1970, Mojo and his mate Mickybo are two nine-year-old boys from opposing sides of the sectarian divide. They are as ‘thick as two small thieves’; playing headers, being mouthy, building huts, spitting from cinema balconies and re-enacting their favourite movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are young cowboys in the making, with the violence of The Troubles only obliquely impacting on them – until finally their friendship is destroyed in a way that they only later come to understand.

This is pure storytelling with Bruiser’s dynamic physicality, providing opportunity for theatre-goers to experience Belfast’s most treasured, living playwright, and to consider that Mojo and Mickybo represent the division of a benighted country that has spent a century at war with itself.

Feature photo by Alberto Mauricio