What began as a tiny space above the founder’s stables became the beating heart of the city’s performing arts. Its leader Jimmy Fay reflects on recent hits and reveals what audiences can expect from the theatre’s anniversary year
‘T
he Lyric gives voice to everyone in Northern Ireland,” says the theatre’s boss, Jimmy Fay. “It’s a beacon.” Fay views the 2026 programme, celebrating 75 years of the Lyric, as an opportunity to showcase current creative talent, as well as honouring the theatre’s past.
One of the plays from the repertoire that Fay was keen to revive is Christina Reid’s Tea in a China Cup, from 1983. With a cast including Marie Jones, the new production – which runs in May – is directed by Dan Gordon, who performed in the original. Reid’s play traces the daily lives of Protestant working-class women in Belfast across three decades, from the second world war to the Troubles, with humour and poignancy.
“Reid’s is an important political voice from the 1980s, articulating the idea that working-class people across the sectarian divide had more in common with each other than was often assumed,” Fay says. In that way, she was very much in tune with the socialist outlook of the Lyric’s tenacious founder-director, Mary O’Malley, who moved to Belfast from Dublin in 1947 and founded Belfast Lyric Players theatre in 1951. “Mary O’Malley was a force,” Fay says. “She surrounded herself with pioneering colleagues who helped bring her singular vision to life. Not only for the Lyric Players theatre, but also the art gallery, music academy and then the drama school.”
