Life
1953- ; b. Co. Cavan; ord. 1980; Hennessy Lit. Award for stories, 1980;
Arts Council/Comhairle Ealaíon Award, 1985 [var. 1986]; a novel,
Priest (1987), followed by The Trouble with Sarah Gullion (1988);
plays include Strawboys (Peacock 1987), nominated for two Harvey
awards; Una Pooka (Peacock 1989), set during the Papal visit of
John Paul II to Ireland, winner of RTÉ/Bank of Ireland Award, BBC broadcast
version planned for 1990; The Waking of Brian Boru (Ennis 1989);
Misogynist (Dublin Theatre Fest. 1990), also a winner won the RTÉ/Bank of Ireland
Award; revived as solo performance with Tom Hickey, and successfully toured
in Ireland; first Stewart Parker New Playwright’s Bursary, 1990;
Hubert Murray’s Widow (1993); stage-version of Priest
(Abbey ?1993); Backside to the Wind (Andrews Lane Th.), produced
by Red Kettle Theatre, 30 March 1995; Amazing Grace (Peacock 1998);
Sour Grapes (q.d.), a play about paedophilia and homosexuality
in in clerical life.
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Works
Priest (Blackstaff 1987), followed by The Trouble with Sarah Gullion
(Blackstaff 1988), 128pp. Plays, Una Pooka, in First Run 2 (London:
Nick Hern Books 1990); “Hubert Murray’s Widow”, in Christopher
Fitz-Simon & Sanford Sternlicht, eds., New Plays from the Abbey
Theatre, Vol. 1: 1993-1995 [Irish Studies] (Syracuse UP 1996), xxiv,
315pp., ill.; “Sour Grapes”, in Judy Friel & Sanford Sternlicht,
ed. & intro., New Plays from the Abbey Theatre, Vol 2: 1996-1998
(Syracuse UP 2001).
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Criticism
John Banville, Seachange, and Michael Harding, Kiss, at
the Focus Theatre, Dublin; Harding’s play Ceacht Houdini, dir. Bairbre
Ní Chaoimh, presented by Amharclann de hÍde, at Peacock
(IT notice 19.11.94).
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‘Misogynist’, in David Grant, sel. and intro., The Crack in the Emerald, New Irish Play (Nick Hern Books 1990, 1994), noticed by Brian Fallon (Irish Times 14.1.95) and evoked in terms of ‘rantings of Harding’s "feminist".
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin: G&M 1994), selects ‘Misogynist’.
Misogynist (1990), a play concerning women left to carry
the horror of the time, and based on ‘obsessive male voice at once
guilty, arrogant, and sexually fearful’ [see Patrick Burke, revew
of David Grant, ed., The Crack in the Emerald (2nd edn. 1994).
The Trouble with Sarah Gullion (1988), a novel concerned with the plight of contemporary Irish women in an Ireland of hard men and gunmen; Sarah, married to James Gullion, lives in a frightening closed world of brutality and humiliation; harshly conservative neighburs and in-laws turn a blind eye on her subjection, driving her deeper and deeper into an inner life that loses touch with external reality; called by New Nation reviewer a ‘vision of a hsyterical province of sexual violence, mental disintegration, and sectarian conspiracy’ (Blackstaff Catalogue, 1988).
Poorhouse, a screenversion of his story on the famine, was broadcast on RTE (3 April 1996), dir. Frank Stapleton.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)