This dynamic duo were part of the astonishingly masterful & entertaing The Company of Trees performance we experienced during HedgeRow Fest 2025. Excited to wecome Michale & Philip back to Mount Briscoe. 

Michael James Ford’s acclaimed performance of The Happy Prince has played several sell-out runs in Bewley’s Café Theatre and has travelled widely throughout Ireland. It has also toured to France, Finland, Egypt, England and the USA.

This masterful piece of storytelling is accompanied by Philip Dodd’s haunting and evocative live musical score.

The Happy Prince is perhaps the best loved and most enduringly popular of all Oscar Wilde’s stories. It is the bittersweet tale of a gregarious swallow who befriends a melancholy statue while en route to Egypt. The bird helps the Prince to alleviate the suffering of his poor citizens and in doing so learns profound truths about the nature of love and suffering.

…bittersweet and delightfully witty…Michael James Ford has an enchanting style of storytelling that leaves the audience hanging on his every word. Sunday Tribune

…a shimmering piece, bleak and heartbreaking as well as ultimately hopeful.

                                                                                    Sunday Independent

As leaps of the imagination go, this one is effortlessly propelled. Sunday Times

…Michael James Ford is mesmerising as he carries us through Wilde’s perfect mixture of magic, exoticism, mundane reality and insensitive, shortsighted pragmatism and vanity. Irish Examiner

….embodies the playful and moving tale perfectly.  In Dublin

Michael James Ford’s rendition of The Happy Prince, told in a freewheeling conversational style, creates an instant rapport with the audience. Sunday Business Post