sit on the deck - have a few drinks put the world to rights - and watch working-class protestants burn some tyres and sticks and shout some shit - if that can't make a middle-class ex-catholic happy what can Twenty years on from the Belfast Peace Agreement, Tom and Maggie are enjoying a glass of wine or two on Gerry and Rosemary's deck, waiting for the Eleventh Night bonfire to be lit in the estate below. But there is tension in the air; and what these neighbours of old think of one another, truly, feels just one unguarded moment away on this hot summer's night. A companion piece to Owen McCafferty's play Quietly, Fire Below (A War of Words) was a co-production between the Lyric Theatre and the Abbey Theatre and premiered at the Lyric Belfast in association with the Belfast International Arts Festival in October 2017.

Born in 1961, Owen McCafferty lives with his wife, three children and granddaughter in Belfast. His work for the stage includes Shoot the Crow (Druid, Galway, 1997; Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2003), Mojo Mickybo (Kabosh, Belfast, 1998), Closing Time (National Theatre, London, 2002), Cold Comfort (Primecut Productions, Belfast, 2002), Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre, London, 2003), Days of Wine and Roses (Donmar Warehouse, 2005), a version of Sophocles' Antigone (Primecut Productions, Belfast, 2008) and The Absence of Women (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, 2010). He has won the Meyer-Whitworth, John Whiting and Evening Standard Awards for New Playwriting.