Two aging Irish criminals hang out at the ferry terminal in Algeciras Spain, hoping to find the estranged daughter of one of them. They ruminate about their lost youth, interrogate young people who enter the terminal, and engage in comic business. Chapters alternate between their vigil and flashbacks to their ignominious past.
Night Boat to Tangier would make a good play. The present day chapters in particular have a theatrical feel to them, a riff of Waiting for Godot. All dialogue, a minimalist set, and actions that sound like stage directions:
Maurice lies back across the bench, as though laid out for the deadhouse, with his hands clasped decorously at the chest. Charlie Redmond drops an invisible set of rosary beads into his friend's palmed clasp.
The flashback chapters range farther afield but could be easily adapted for the stage. The story wouldn't lose a bit of its "dark humor and hard-boiled Hibernian lyricism."
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