It was a case of bringing it all back home when Druid Theatre concluded the Irish run of its much-acclaimed Synge cycle on the island of Inis Meáin yesterday.
Inis Meáin had been a rich source of inspiration for the playwright John Millington Synge and among the plays he wrote about the island was Riders to the Sea, in which a woman loses all her sons to the ocean.
Garry Hynes of Druid finally achieved her dream of staging all six of Synge's plays in one major production, DruidSynge, earlier this year when it premiered at the Galway Arts Festival.
Since then it has played in Dublin and at the Edinburgh International Festival, but Hynes had one other dream - to bring the plays back home.
The six plays in the Synge cycle were performed at various venues throughout the island yesterday, including a field across from the church and in a 3,500-year-old fort, DúConchúir.
The original schedule, which was to stage the entire production at the ancient fort, had been altered, chiefly to accommodate the All-Ireland hurling final between Galway and Cork. So, while Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen were being staged in the hall, the Druid production team at the fort was busy setting up two television screens and a radio relay to allow people to see the day's other drama unfold.
Production manager Eamonn Fox said bringing the production to Inis Meáin had been a greater challenge logistically than bringing it to Edinburgh.
"Everything had to be craned on and off the boats," he explained. "Last Wednesday a group of 22 American students shared a ferry with three Portaloos, which we brought up to Dún Conchúir."
They also brought a generator and several marquees, one of which was serving as a dressing room, another as a control room and yet another as a catering area where lobster tea was served after the hurling final.
Timber pews had been built to accommodate the audience, who were not allowed to sit on the stone structure.