1950s. Michael Evans (main character) Michael does not appear onstage as a child, but his presence is alluded to by the other characters, while the adult Michael speaks his lines from the side of the stage. As a child, Michael is seen as being surrounded by love, since all five of the sisters dote on him. Michael also acts as a narrator, not only dictating the action as it goes on, but revealing the futures of the other characters in the play. Gerry Evans Gerry is initially portrayed as an intensely negative character, particularly by Kate, for having left Chris after fathering her illegitimate son, Michael. However, upon his first appearance in the play, Gerry is shown to be charming and genuinely affectionate towards Chris. His current job as a gramophone salesman (like his former job as a ballroom dancing instructor) represents his freedom, in sharp contrast to the stagnant lives of the Mundy sisters. This is made all the more obvious by the fact that he is leaving Ireland to join the International Brigade and fight in the Spanish Civil War, something that is further disapproved of by Kate. Through Michael's narration, we learn that Gerry is later left with a limp after falling off a motorbike in Barcelona. As well as having romantic feelings for Chris, Gerry seems particularly inclined towards Agnes, although the true state of their relationship remains in doubt. We learn later that he secretly has another family back in Wales, and that all his proposals of marriage to Christina have been false. Adult narrator Michael reveals that, after Gerry's death in the 1950s, he had been contacted by a half brother in South Wales, who revealed that Gerry had had a wife and several sons there at the time depicted in the drama. Father Jack Jack is in his late fifties. He had left home as a young man to work as a missionary in a leper colony in Uganda. Beyond this, he had been a Catholic chaplain in the British Army in East Africa during World War I. He is well respected in Donegal for his missionary work in a leper colony. However, his sudden return to Ballybeg for undisclosed reasons has paved the way for great changes. He has difficulty with his memory, often forgetting the names of his sisters or confusing them with his former house boy Okawa, with whom we