No Magic Pill

If you’re a wheelchair-user, you’ve got a simple choice: either you suck sweets in a corner and watch television all day or you try to change the world around you. There ain’t gonna be no magic pill in my day.

This is the (mostly) true story of Martin Naughton AKA Michael Collins in a wheelchair. Martin is an agitator. A disruptor. A seeker of justice and planter of (truth) bombs. But will his anarchic quest for equality be derailed by dreams of love and new horizons?

Based on the real life of Martin Naughton and his campaign for independence for disabled people in Ireland, No Magic Pill, written by Christian O’Reilly, is a joyful, shameless, no-holds-barred story of one
man’s fight for justice and love.

This edition was published to coincide with the production at Black Box, Galway, and the Civic, Tallaght, for Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2022.

Christian O’Reilly is a playwright from Galway whose first full-length play, The Good Father (published in The Tiger In Winter, Methuen Drama 2006), was produced by Druid Theatre Company for the 25th Galway Arts Festival in 2002 and toured throughout Ireland in 2003. It was joint winner of the 2002 Stewart Parker New Playwright Bursary. His screen credits include Inside I’m Dancing, a feature film that won the Audience Award for Best Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2004, two Irish Film and Television Awards, and the AIB People’s Choice Award for Best Irish Film.