First play by established Irish poet and novelist - premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin Set in a bedroom in well-to-do Dublin, Communion is about two brothers in their early thirties. Jordan, a trainee doctor, is bedbound and dying of a tumour; Marcus, brilliant and charismatic, has been a psychiatric patient. Around the deathbed gather their long-suffering mother, an ebullient neighbour, Marcus's girlfriend, and their healthily sceptical priest. But gloom is repeatedly dispelled by the liveliness of the dialogue and characters and by the buoyant humour on display - particularly at the expense of the Catholic Church. Communion was premiered in the Peacock at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin on 25 April 2002. One of Mathews' collections of poems, According to the Small Hours, is described as 'exploring the connections between the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the everyday' - which could also be said of Communion...