Brisbane Festival features dance performance based on unsolved Moss Moore murder case

Maurice “Moss” Moore was a bachelor farmer who raised cattle at Reamore in Ireland’s County Kerry. In 1958, his bashed and strangled body was found shoved under a ledge near a stream, just 18 metres from the home he had vanished from eight days earlier.

Moore had been feuding with his neighbour and former friend, Dan Foley, over a fence Foley had erected to keep his cows from wandering. Moore claimed the fence encompassed half an acre of his land and was taking Foley to court. Foley, a powerful man with a temper, was reported to have said that “only one man” would be attending the court hearing.

The community that had banded together to search for Moore’s body ostracised and harassed Foley, but he was never convicted of the crime and died five years later.

When John B. Keane wrote the play The Field in 1965, he based it directly on the Moss Moore murder, and the unsolved crime passed into Irish folklore. Richard Harris would star in a 1990 movie version.

For Cork-based theatre-maker Luke Murphy, the story illustrates something fundamental about the Irish national character.

“Property disputes, or inheritance disputes, are one of the highest causes of violent crime in Ireland,” Murphy says on an unseasonably warm morning at home in the seaside town of Cobh in County Cork. “There is a kind of fixation around owning land.”

“The Field is such a seminal story in this country that if you’re dealing with land in any kind of theatrical context, The Field is the reference point.”

Murphy is the director, choreographer and star of Scorched Earth, a show playing at the Brisbane Festival that combines tense crime drama and – just go with me on this – contemporary dance.

In a darkened interrogation room, a detective (Sarah Dowling) questions a suspect (Murphy) about the death of a property developer years earlier that was considered an accident at the time.

Scenes switch back and forth in time, and at various points, the talking gives way to expressive movement. An act of murder becomes a grotesque dance, and grass and soil come to visceral life.

Murphy acknowledges the difficulty in explaining what his shows are like.

“Someone said they felt the best term to use would be something like ‘choreographed theatre’, which is not a terrible way of putting it.

“I think of it as dance that is very narratively driven. It’s quite cinematic, because I trained in writing for film.

“Movement is how we show what is going on in the internal landscape of the character. So normally when there’s movement in my works, that takes the place of a soliloquy.”

Murphy’s work is perfect festival fare in that it pushes envelopes and upends expectations. On his previous Brisbane Festival visit in 2024, he brought Volcano, a sci-fi dance piece that was thrilling, puzzling – and four hours long (Scorched Earth is a punchier 80 minutes).

“They’re very different. Volcano is this psychological drama that happens in one space with two characters that never really leave, while Scorched Earth is designed more like a film, where they’re jumping to multiple spaces.”

Murphy spent several years with two immersive theatre companies, Punchdrunk in the UK and Ultima Vez in Belgium, before launching Attic Projects in New York City. He moved back to Ireland during COVID, marking a major shift in his work.

“Having your career completely interrupted, I was like, if there’s anything I feel like I’m holding back, this is the time to just do it.

“My skill set is very much in the line between being a dancer and an actor. Volcano was probably the first show where I went, OK, I’m actually going to lean into [acting] a lot more.”

Scorched Earth brings a five-strong ensemble to Brisbane – rounded out by Will Thompson, Ryan O’Neil, and Tyler Carney-Faleatua – following seasons in Dublin, Galway and New York.

“I can’t wait to come back to Brisbane. We had such a good time last time, getting the boat down the water to the Powerhouse every day. It was gorgeous,” Murphy says.

As for the Moss Moore case: the actual killer is less important to Murphy than what the killing says about Ireland.

“It speaks to ideas about insiders and outsiders, and why someone’s death would or wouldn’t be more important to your community.

“Like anything, you know, you start pulling on a thread and it takes you to places that you never really expected.”

Scorched Earth plays at the Brisbane Powerhouse, September 17-20.

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