Theatre: Youth’s The Season? at the Abbey Theatre

A group of young Dubliners work and play hard, flirt wildly, fall in love, and trade devastating insults in the spring of 1930. Written when Mary Manning was 26 and first performed in 1931, this startlingly modern coming-of-age satire explores the ups and downs of life for privileged young Irish people in newly independent Dublin.

Mary Manning’s plays were extremely popular with audiences of their time and this 2025 production will offer the opportunity to revisit this precious gem from the Irish theatre canon. As Abbey Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin says, ”I believe the combination of Sarah Jane Scaife and Mary Manning is a thrilling prospect, and I cannot wait to bring this production before an audience.”

Commenting on the play, Sarah Jane Scaife said: “When I read Youth’s The Season? I was really surprised at how different the world it presented felt… It was from a young, female, urban perspective. It was funny but in a caustic way, which felt very recognisable to me. The sense of angst, boredom and frustration for what society had on offer to young women or young men who didn’t conform to the stereotype of Irish society, was familiar in a very real way for me. What is so interesting today is recognising that all the same frustrations, the fears of war, the anxiety of being different or not fitting in that are experienced by the youth today, are written into this play which was written by a young woman in her early twenties, in 1930.” 

Youth’s the Season? is part of the Gregory Project at the Abbey Theatre, a body of work celebrating the legacy of Abbey Theatre co-founder Augusta Gregory. The play’s title references a line from John Gay’s The Beggar Opera, Youth’s the Season made for Joys.