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THOUSANDS turned out for the Shannon Musical Society’s production of The Pyjama Game, which finished its run last Saturday night.
The society’s annual production is always one of the highlights of the social scene and chairperson Dara Gough said she was delighted with how it had gone. “It went very well, we had full houses most nights and across the board the feedback was excellent about the whole show, the lighting, sound, the chorus, the feedback was just great.”
She said that the week of the production is quite challenging. “It’s very busy. We moved into the comprehensive school on the Wednesday night and we didn’t open until Sunday. We’ve been going from the Tuesday of the week before the show for about 11 days non-stop. It’s exhausting. We’re delighted now to have the break and we’ll go and see other shows. Ennis are staging The Sound of Music and we’ll have a crew going to see them and Limerick are doing Big, so hopefully we’ll go to that too. We’ll tour around a bit because we had great support from other musicals around the country, the likes of Tralee, Galway, Thurles, Clonmel, they all travelled to see it.”
She paid tribute to those who made the production happen. “The lead roles were Gary Keane and Hilary Orpen. They held up very well, our leads were very strong and I think they did very well all week. The set was very big and there were very big set changes.
“We had about 12 in the stage crew, six on either side of the stage making changes and it got tighter as the week went on, and they were faster and more accurate. It takes time changing the set when you’re not used to doing it. We opened on Sunday night, it was a great opening night and by Tuesday or Wednesday it was down to a fine art.
“Donal Cantwell is an award-winning director and he was very good, we were very pleased with him. Logistically, it was hard for him travelling up and down from Dublin every weekend. It was hard from that point of view. Our choreographer was Karen Barrett and she’s a member of our society. Our musical director is Carmel Griffin, I think it’s our seventh production with us and she’s fantastic.”
Dara said that the people of Shannon always get behind the society’s efforts. “We’re so thankful for everyone who came on board and supported us. It’s a real community event; I don’t think there’s a society in the country that comes together like it.
“From front of house all the way back, there’s probably about 150 involved and everyone pulls out the stops. It’s probably the single biggest event in the town, just in terms of how many people come out. A couple of thousand people come to see the show every year so it’s huge and it’s the talk of the town. It was a fantastic week.”
