Tag Archives: play

DRUID has announced that their five-star production of The Last Return, Sonya Kelly’s award-winning new comedy, will play glór Arts Centre, Ennis as part of a national tour for two nights in February. Directed by Sara Joyce, The Last Return, a thrilling comedy about conflict, peace and the pursuit of territory at any cost, will be stage in Ennis on February 17 and 18. One final night. One last chance. Five people queue for a ticket to the hottest show in town. All they must do is simply wait in line. But what in life is ever simple? Who will triumph, who will fail, and who will walk away with… The Last Return? The play has earned five-star ratings from The Times, What’s On Stage, The Arts Desk and The Wee Review, and praise such as ‘pitch black comic mayhem’ from The Guardian, ‘wonderful’ from The New York Times, and ‘shocking and very funny’ from The Irish Times. As part …

THE Kilfenora Dramatic Society return to the stage this week performing in the acclaimed comedy ‘It’s the Real McCoy’. The players are looking forward to getting back on stage in Kilfenora Hall following a break due to Covid and they will be performing shows on December 2, 3 and 4 at 8pm. The phenomenally successful play was written by Tommy Marren, a playwright and radio broadcaster from County Mayo. The action takes place over two days in the spring of 1964 in the humble abode of Madge Molloy – a woman in her mid-60s who has for 40 years wondered why her husband Tom, to whom she was married for just four months, disappeared without trace or reason. The cast of this production comprises John Howard, Paul Carkill, Willie Cahir, Mary Buckley, Lisa Carkill, Caroline O’Dea and Eileen Hegarty; the stage crew is Mary McCormack, Michael O’Loughlin, and Pat and John Lynch under the direction of Fr Ned Crosby. A …

IN what is believed to be a first, the Kilkee Playwright Festival will be bringing an award winning play directly into people’s homes using the increasingly popular app Zoom. Hot Potato Production’s play Just Guff by Jim Ward has been adapted for audio with script development and direction by Jenny Bassett. It will be broadcast into homes via Zoom this Saturday, April 11, at 8pm. And the good news for people looking for entertainment during the lock-down is the broadcast can be accessed for free. Director Jenny Bassett explains, “I used Zoom prior to Covid-19 and was amazed just how easy it was to use. No downloading, just click on a link just before the scheduled time and a page opened up and I was in a virtual meeting with people from around the world. I was also surprised at the sound quality, I immediately thought how it could be used for broadcasting a performance. “Shortly afterwards we were  restricted …

WHEN Noelle Brown decided to look for her birth parents, she was met with consistent opposition and stone walling, tough experiences she has turned into something positive through her play, Postscript. Born into a mother and baby home in Cork in the 1960s, she was adopted at eight weeks of age. She grew up knowing about the adoption but had very little curiosity around it. “I knew it from a very young age, which was great because I grew up at a time when people weren’t told. I knew people who were told when they were 21, which obviously didn’t go down very well but I suppose those parents thought they were doing the right thing as well. For me, there was no shock element to it.” She grew up quite happily in a loving home and now she says her contentment with her lot may be why she didn’t spend much time thinking about her birth parents. “It [her …

PEMBERLEY Productions and the Lime Tree Theatre are bringing the one man off-Broadway production of In Acting Shakespeare on an Irish tour this month, with dates in Clare, Limerick and Galway. The tour gives Irish audiences a rare chance to see an off-Broadway production on their doorsteps and it comes off the back of a two-month, sold-out run in New York City. In Acting Shakespeare is a funny, touching and uplifting story of one man’s discovery of Shakespeare, acting and language. Freely adapted, with permission, from Sir Ian McKellen’s Acting Shakespeare, James De Vita tells his own story of a young fisherman searching for a new career. This fun, fervent tribute to one man’s personal journey, deftly weaves some of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues with James’ days as a Long Island fisherman and his nights as a classical actor. Speaking to The Clare Champion, Tim Smith, who is producing the play, which is written by and stars Wisconsin native De Vita, …

TOM Crean is a name that has worked its way into people’s consciousness over the last 15 years. The Kerry explorer’s story is fairly well known now, in part because of Aidan Dooley, who has brought his one-man show, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, around the country for the last 10 years. A Galway man, Aidan has lived in England for years and it was there that he discovered the Crean story. “I came across Crean for the first time when I was asked to perform a museum theatre piece in England in about 2001. I had never heard of him before that. I did an awful lot of research on the expeditions themselves because there was very little written about him. This was before Michael Smith’s book, Unsung Hero, was published. He was in the process of writing the book while I was in the process of finding out more about Tom Crean from a theatrical perspective and that’s …