Next Year Will Be a Good One is SHIVAUN O’CASEY’s memoir of childhood and her youthful endeavours as an aspiring actress and stage manager in Devon, Bristol, London and the United States. She and her father, the famous playwright Sean O’Casey, her mother, the former actress Eileen Carey, and her two gifted older brothers, were a close-knit family. Her earliest memories were those of the blackouts, warning sirens, bombings, and all-clears of the Second World War.
At the suggestion of George Bernard Shaw, she and her brothers attended the famously progressive Dartington Hall school in Totnes. In London and Paris she was befriended by playwrights and directors who had fled McCarthyism in the United States and was especially close to Sam and Charlotte Wanamaker. Samuel Beckett, Harold Macmillan (wearing his publisher’s hat) and David Garnett are among those who enliven an already spirited story.
Shivaun’s memoir of her early life is rooted in the figure of her father, struggling despite his failing eyesight to create plays different from the great Dublin trilogy that had brought him early fame. She was an eye-witness to his genius and creative resolve and to the wider developments of contemporary drama. Hers is a story of love and loss amidst the extraordinary busyness of a life dedicated to theatre.
