What do you think?
Rate this book
Disco Pigs and Sucking Dublin
Two plays by the winner of the Best Fringe Production Award at the 1996 Dublin Festival.
64 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2014
9 people are currently reading
173 people want to read
About the author
Enda Walsh
44 books41 followersEnda Walsh (born 1967) is an Irish playwright born in Dublin and currently living in London. Walsh attended the same secondary school where both Roddy Doyle and Paul Mercier taught. Having written for the Dublin Youth Theatre, he moved to Cork where he wrote Fishy Tales for the Graffiti Theatre Company, followed by Ginger Ale Boy for Corcadorca Theatre Company. His main breakthrough came with the production of his play Disco Pigs in collaboration with director Pat Kiernan of Corcadorca. Since then he moved to London, where he has been particularly prolific over the past five years, bringing his productions to thirteen stage plays, two radio plays and two screenplays.
Winner of the 1997 Stewart Parker and the George Devine Awards, he won the Abbey Theatre Writer in Association Award for 2006. Productions of his plays at the Edinburgh Festival have won four Fringe First Awards, two Critic's Awards and a Herald Archangel Award (2008). His plays, notably Disco Pigs[1], Bedbound, Small Things, Chatroom, New Electric Ballroom[2] and The Walworth Farce, have been translated into more than 20 languages and have had productions throughout Europe and in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. He has written two radio plays, with Four Big Days in the Life of Dessie Banks for RTÉ winning the I PA Radio Drama Award and The Monotonous Life of Little Miss P for the BBC commended at the Gran Prix Berlin. His commissioned work includes plays for Paines Plough in London, the Druid Theatre in Galway, the Kammerspiele in Munich and the Royal National's Connections Project in London. He wrote the screenplay of the film Disco Pigs and co-wrote the screenplay of Hunger which was directed by Steve McQueen and stars Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who starved himself to death in protest over British rule. Hunger won numerous awards (see below) including the Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Film Award from the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2009 and a nomination for Best British Film at the British Academy Film Awards. He wrote an adaptation of his play Chatroom for a film directed by Hideo Nakata which was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He is currently under commission for two films, an adaptation of the children's story Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson and a biography of Dusty Springfield.
Winner of the 1997 Stewart Parker and the George Devine Awards, he won the Abbey Theatre Writer in Association Award for 2006. Productions of his plays at the Edinburgh Festival have won four Fringe First Awards, two Critic's Awards and a Herald Archangel Award (2008). His plays, notably Disco Pigs[1], Bedbound, Small Things, Chatroom, New Electric Ballroom[2] and The Walworth Farce, have been translated into more than 20 languages and have had productions throughout Europe and in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. He has written two radio plays, with Four Big Days in the Life of Dessie Banks for RTÉ winning the I PA Radio Drama Award and The Monotonous Life of Little Miss P for the BBC commended at the Gran Prix Berlin. His commissioned work includes plays for Paines Plough in London, the Druid Theatre in Galway, the Kammerspiele in Munich and the Royal National's Connections Project in London. He wrote the screenplay of the film Disco Pigs and co-wrote the screenplay of Hunger which was directed by Steve McQueen and stars Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who starved himself to death in protest over British rule. Hunger won numerous awards (see below) including the Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Film Award from the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2009 and a nomination for Best British Film at the British Academy Film Awards. He wrote an adaptation of his play Chatroom for a film directed by Hideo Nakata which was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He is currently under commission for two films, an adaptation of the children's story Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson and a biography of Dusty Springfield.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 11, 2013
Disco Pigs – Pig and Runt are best friends, but when Pig develops romantic interest in Runt, they start to split apart. Pig gets more and more violent and mad, as Runt begins to realize she wants "a try" of something different.
Sucking Dublin – At a party, Steve rapes Little Lamb. Steve's girlfriend Amanda (also Little Lamb's older sister), is there, as is Little Lamb's baby's father, the junkie Lep, and Lep's sister, Fat. All are left broken by the rape, and finally Little Lamb makes a desperate mistake.
Holy hell, this Enda Walsh can write. Reading a play to yourself is always a bit dodgey, as you don't have the benefit of seeing it the way it was intended. For example, Cillian Murphy brings so much to Pig's monologue in Disco Pigs. Perhaps because of they're plays, or because they're just on the page, or both – the plays seem meandering until the very last monologue, when everything sucks up into one big beautiful, painful meaning.
I like Disco Pigs the best, I think, because the invented language gives it such a great feel, but Sucking Dublin holds its own, for sure. I desperately want to know how exactly Enda Walsh devised this mad made-up language, as in what is it based on? And of course I've seen parts of Disco Pigs performed, sort of (in the film adaptation), whereas I've seen none of Sucking Dublin at all. So it's hard to say how I'd feel if I'd seen them both in the theatre. Still, Disco Pigs has the bonus factors of 1) psychic twins, 2) mad violent teenagers, 3) invented personal language (!!!!!!!).
"Wa colour's love, Pig?" (And somehow it manages to answer this, which is mad.)
"Free drink, pretty please."
"He my one and only, he da bes and da worse pal in dis bad ol whirl."
Sucking Dublin – At a party, Steve rapes Little Lamb. Steve's girlfriend Amanda (also Little Lamb's older sister), is there, as is Little Lamb's baby's father, the junkie Lep, and Lep's sister, Fat. All are left broken by the rape, and finally Little Lamb makes a desperate mistake.
Holy hell, this Enda Walsh can write. Reading a play to yourself is always a bit dodgey, as you don't have the benefit of seeing it the way it was intended. For example, Cillian Murphy brings so much to Pig's monologue in Disco Pigs. Perhaps because of they're plays, or because they're just on the page, or both – the plays seem meandering until the very last monologue, when everything sucks up into one big beautiful, painful meaning.
I like Disco Pigs the best, I think, because the invented language gives it such a great feel, but Sucking Dublin holds its own, for sure. I desperately want to know how exactly Enda Walsh devised this mad made-up language, as in what is it based on? And of course I've seen parts of Disco Pigs performed, sort of (in the film adaptation), whereas I've seen none of Sucking Dublin at all. So it's hard to say how I'd feel if I'd seen them both in the theatre. Still, Disco Pigs has the bonus factors of 1) psychic twins, 2) mad violent teenagers, 3) invented personal language (!!!!!!!).
"Wa colour's love, Pig?" (And somehow it manages to answer this, which is mad.)
"Free drink, pretty please."
"He my one and only, he da bes and da worse pal in dis bad ol whirl."
November 22, 2019
Probably much more effective to see these performed than to read them.
June 2, 2022
THIS WAS SO GOOD i just want to scream. thats my entire review. just AHHHHHHH.
November 25, 2022
Absolutely incredible, Enda Walsh never disappoints! Two very complex and interesting characters, capturing and expressing the turbulence of childhood and the start of adulthood in a very special way. I think disco pigs is something everyone should read / watch!
I had watched the film first, and reading the play text was a very very different experience, but still just as brilliant! So unique and action packed in a way like no other. Would have been an absolute gem to see live in theatre I can imagine!
I had watched the film first, and reading the play text was a very very different experience, but still just as brilliant! So unique and action packed in a way like no other. Would have been an absolute gem to see live in theatre I can imagine!
August 29, 2007
Sick, Pig. Sick. There's a lot of disturbing stuff in this play - a lot of obsession and violence. What stood out for me was the way it was written. The characters have invented their own language to prove how close they are. Oh, and the movie's pretty good, too.
January 2, 2024
Disco Pigs 4/5:
Another read for class. It was an interesting character study of what happens when closeness becomes an obsession and life-altering codependency. I think this would've been better watched than read because their speech and how the play is written are difficult to read if you're unfamiliar with Cork 90s slang. And I think there's a lot of heavy visuals that would make this more enjoyable to watch. I have also not watched the movie with Cillian Murphy (I will after completing my scene study), so this was hard to grasp only being familiar with the text.
Sucking Dublin 2/5:
Sucking Dublin didn't stick out for me in any way. I think conceptually the plot is kind of interesting (although not something revolutionary), but the way it was written didn't stick in my brain at all. It felt a lot more disjointed for some reason, and the dialogue did have too much variety. It was a lot of people just yelling at each other
Another read for class. It was an interesting character study of what happens when closeness becomes an obsession and life-altering codependency. I think this would've been better watched than read because their speech and how the play is written are difficult to read if you're unfamiliar with Cork 90s slang. And I think there's a lot of heavy visuals that would make this more enjoyable to watch. I have also not watched the movie with Cillian Murphy (I will after completing my scene study), so this was hard to grasp only being familiar with the text.
Sucking Dublin 2/5:
Sucking Dublin didn't stick out for me in any way. I think conceptually the plot is kind of interesting (although not something revolutionary), but the way it was written didn't stick in my brain at all. It felt a lot more disjointed for some reason, and the dialogue did have too much variety. It was a lot of people just yelling at each other
August 20, 2023
Icky, icky. I saw the “Disco Pigs” film years ago and loved it, so I thought I’d try reading the play, so nauseatingly violent and chaotic (which was to be expected). Not even going to go into the depth that is “Sucking Dublin,” I was reading it with my jaw dropped cause I was so shocked. It does what it is meant to do well. Just wasn’t expecting at all what occurred (make sure to look up TW’s). But, it made me super curious how these could be staged. (I’ve had professors say to use exclamation points sparingly so they don’t lose meaning, after reading these it made so much sense, I was just reading it as continuous shouting the entire time)
November 12, 2018
'Disco Pigs' is hard-going for reading because of Pig and Runt's special, secret, kind-of-Cork -kind-of-not language - I'm sure it really comes alive when it's performed.
February 13, 2022
Read for compulsory theatre course.
December 30, 2022
Horrible situation, and plenty of horrible people.
May 2, 2023
I gave up on Disco pigs because of the way it was written. I'd have to see it to judge it. and I did read Sucking Dublin but it really does not stand out it any way.
March 18, 2024
Disco Pigs - Really witty account of puberty once you get into the swing of how it’s written (3.5/5)
Sucking Dublin - The horrors (4/5)
Sucking Dublin - The horrors (4/5)
August 19, 2025
To me, this occasionally nonsensical writing style feels like a direct descendant of Under Milk Wood.
February 3, 2016
Okay, äh, keine Ahnung? Ich habe noch nie wirklich Theaterstücke (außerhalb der Schule) gelesen und es fällt mir wirklich schwer zu sagen, wie ich die beiden jetzt fand. Ich kenne die Verfilmung von Disco Pigs, fand den Film etwas seltsam, aber irgendwie fesselnd. Sucking Dublin habe ich das erste Mal gelesen, aber ich denke, dass es als Aufführung ziemlich krass war/ist/wäre. Hm.
Joa, also nochmal: keine Ahnung.
Joa, also nochmal: keine Ahnung.
September 9, 2015
(Disco Pigs)
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews