A Healthy Grave

SIMON BRETT / MARCH - APRIL 2014

This charming play features Hilary and Robert Travers, a retired childless couple who were prominent academics in their careers,

now faced with spending their time together living quietly in the country. Once the life and soul of the university,

Robert is now confined to telling all his anecdotes to Hilary, who has, of course, heard them all many times before!

There are many touching scenes between them as well as very funny moments.

Each has a secret. However, each one knows about the other’s secret, but they play along with this in a most interesting way.

CAST

Robert Travers: Colm Ó Maolmhuire

Hilary Travers: Mary Cauldwell

Voices

Telephone Message Operator: Carol Boylan

Julian Baraclough: Jim Gibney

Keith Fulton: Phil Hughes

CREW

Director: Áine McGuinness

Stage Manager: Aga Daly

Lighting: Richard Norman-Wright, Rory Norman-Wright

Sound: Ronald Jones

Set Design, Construction and Decor: Billy Fitzgerald, Paul Jordan, Eugene Osborne, Kevin O’Malley, Rita McCarthy, Carol Boylan, Catherine Noone, Stephen Daly, Mati Daly

Wardrobe: Máire Keogh

Continuity: Marianne Gibney

Front of House: Carol Boylan, Rita McCarthy, Ethna McQuillan and Group Members

Programme: Ronald Jones, Kevin O’Malley

Poster/Programme Design: fastnetgraphics

Rehearsal Photographs: Daily Photography

Announcements: Richard Norman-Wright

MANY YOUNG MEN OF TWENTY

John B. Keane / February 2014

Against a background of unemployment and emigration in Ireland of the 1960s, Many Young Men of Twenty centers on Peg, a servant girl who has had a child out of wedlock.

Abandoned by her boyfriend, she now finds herself being courted by two new suitors, but which one will she choose?

Throw in a cast of fifteen, a fortune teller, a crooked politician, a Holy Josie and an erotic dancer, and you are guaranteed a great night’s hilarious entertainment, particularly with that magic ingredient – the writing of John B. Keane. With live accompaniment on stage by traditional Irish musicians, the play features original songs and music throughout.

CAST

Danger Mullally:Andy Geraghty

Peg: Jane Mehigan

Seelie: Louise Keating

Tom: Dave McGloughlin

Dawheen Timineen Din: Michael McKenna

Maynan: Rita McCarthy

Kevin: Adam Burke

Dinny: Adam Scott

Maurice: Gerard Grimes

Dot: Amie Doyle

Kitty Curley: Carol Boylan

J.J. Houlihan, TD: Liam Shannon

Johnny Houlihan: Shane McInerney

Maggie: Leah Coleman

Sadhbh: Éabha Geraghty

CREW

Director: Kevin O’Malley

Stage Manager: Aga Daly

Lighting and Sound: Richard Norman-Wright, Rory Norman-Wright

Set Design: Kevin O’Malley

Set Construction and Decor: Billy Fitzgerald, Paul Jordan, Eugene Osborne, Ronald Jones, Adam Scott, Michael McKenna 

Wardrobe: Máire Keogh

Front of House: Mary Shannon, Martine Healy, Suzanne Healy, Pat Lacey, Aisling Coleman, Hannah Coleman, Catherine Noone, Lizzy Noone, Eugene Osborne and Members

Poster Design: Kevin O’Malley

Programme: Ronald Jones, Kevin O’Malley

Rehearsal Photographs: Daily Photography

Announcements: Richard Norman-Wright

Choreography: Éabha Geraghty

1959 Evening Echo: Image Depot 

Musicians

Grace Dowling: Button accordion, tin whistle, concertina

Gary Weldon: Guitar, bouzouki

Brian Hurley: Bodhrán

DANCING AT LUGHNASA

Brian Friel

OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2013

This extraordinary play is the story of five unmarried Munday sisters eking out their lives in the small village of Ballybeg in Ireland in 1936. We meet them at the time of the festival of Lughnasa, which celebrates the pagan god of the harvest. The action of the play is told through the memory of the illegitimate son of one of the sisters as he remembers the five women who raised him, his mother and four maiden aunts. He is only seven in 1936, the year his elderly uncle Jack, a priest, returns after serving for twenty-five years as a missionary in a Ugandan leper colony.

For the young boy, two other disturbances occur that summer. The sisters acquire their first radio and he meets his father for the first time, a charming Welsh drifter. From these small events spring the cracks that destroy the foundation of the family forever.

In Dancing at Lughnasa he employs the central motif of dancing and music to explore themes of Irish cultural identity, nostalgia, historical change, and pagan ritual. Widely regarded as Brian Friel's masterpiece, this haunting play is Friel's tribute to the spirit and valour of the past.

CAST

Michael: Rory Keary

Kate: Pat Lacey

Maggie: Aisling Coleman

Aggie: Emma Gallagher

Rosie: Lizzy Noone

Chris: Jane Mehigan

Gerry: Adam Burke

Jack: Colm O'Maolmhuire

CREW

Director: Ronald Jones

Producer: Carol Boylan

Stage Management: Aga Daly

Set Design: Ronald Jones

Set Construction/Decor: Billy Fitzgerald, Paul Jordan, Eugene Osborne, Kevin O’Malley, Deirdre Allen

Lighting: Richard Norman-Wright, Rory Norman-Wright

Sound: Ronald Jones

Sound Editing: Graham Tully    

Costumes: Máire Keogh

Properties: Suzanne Healy

Kites: Poppy Sheridan    

Front of House: Áine McGuinness and Group Members

Poster: fastnetgraphics

Poster Photograph: Shenick Island Photography

Programme: Ronald Jones, Kevin O’Malley

Photographs: Daily Photography

MOLLY SWEENEY

APRIL 2013

Molly Sweeney tells the story of its title character, Molly, a woman blind since infancy, who undergoes an operation to try to restore her sight. Like Friel’s Faith Healer, the play tells Molly’s story through monologues by three actors, in this case Molly, her husband Frank, and her surgeon, Mr Rice. Through their words we, the audience, witness their jealousy, their fear and their desperation for love.

CAST

Molly: Mari Carpenter

Mr Rice: James Gibney

Frank: Richard Norman-Wright

CREW

Director: Mary Cauldwell

Producer: Nara Fritch

Backstage: Aga Daly & Marianne Gibney

Lighting: Ronald Jones

The Gingerbread Lady

NEIL SIMON / FEBRUARY 2013

The Gingerbread Lady is a comedy drama – with serious undertones. It centres on Evy, a cabaret singer whose career, marriage and health have all been destroyed by alcohol. Having just completed a ten-week stint in a rehab facility, she returns home to the welcome of friends with their own problems – Jimmy, a gay actor in danger of losing a part in a play and Toby, an overly vain woman who fears the loss of her looks. Then Polly, her devoted but anxious teenage daughter arrives on the scene, shortly followed by Lou, Evy’s worthless ex-lover. Crackling with the kind of hilarious oneliners we expect from Neil Simon, the play focuses on whether Evy will stay on the wagon or career towards a tragic end...

CAST

Evy: Louise Keating

Polly: Éabha Geraghty

Toby: Deirdre Langton

Jimmy: Dave McGloughlin

Lou: Gerard Grimes

Manuel: Ross O'Shea

Doctor: Ray McCarthy / Michael McKenna

CREW

Director: Kevin O' Malley

Stage Manager: Aga Daly

THE DESERT LULLABY

JENNIFER JOHNSTON / OCTOBER 2012

Moving between the Ireland of the ‘Emergency’ and the present day, ‘the desert lullaby’ is the story of two elderly women: the ‘harmlessly insane’ Flora, and Nellie, her housekeeper, scold and protector.

Their intertwining stories provide an evocative exploration of familial love, oppression, loyalty and memory. Rooted firmly in the imaginative and political tensions at the heart of Ireland past and present, their voices, stories and perspectives – young and old – are an articulation of endurance in the face of greater impersonal forces of destruction: loss, death, decay and betrayal.

By turns comic and harrowing, ‘the desert lullaby’ confirms Jennifer Johnston as one of Ireland’s most significant dramatists.

CAST

Flora: Rita McCarthy

Nellie: Suzanne Healy

Young Flora: Ashlea Cox

Young Nellie: Jane Mehigan

Eddie:Adam Burke

CREW

Director: Ronald Jones

BOSTON MARRIAGE

DAVID MAMET / APRIL 2012

This deliciously amusing play is a comedy. Set in New England in the United States during a time of puritan respectability c 1900, the play concerns two women Anna and Claire. We find ourselves in the residence of Anna (Mary O’Maolmhuire), a middle-aged, fashionable lady who engages in a High Society, portentous, literate babble laden with sarcasm. She is visited by her ‘old best friend’ Claire, (Nara Fritch) who has returned to her, after an indeterminate absence.  Claire has come to tell her that she is ‘in love’. They engage in mischievously playful dialogue of poisonous verbal candy, repartee and one-upmanship.

Catherine, the maid, (Ciara Leonard). Her relationship to the two ladies is inexplicable in this zany household. At first she appears to be meek and subservient and is verbally abused by both Anna and Claire, who call her variously Bridie, Mary, Peggy, Molly and Nora. However, she is inured to the abuse and by her cheeky retorts and ‘rapier wit’ makes it clear that she is in on the elaborate game.

Mamet has been compared to Jean Genet (The Maids), Oscar Wilde, GB Shaw, Eugene Ionescu and Noel Coward.  This is a play of wit and humour.

CAST

Anna: Mary O’Maolmhuire

Claire: Nara Fritch

Catherine:Ciara Leonard

CREW

Director: Marianne Gibney

Stage Manager: James Gibney

Continuity: Gemma Byrne

Set Design: Ronald Jones

Set Construction / DecorBilly Fitzgerald, Paul Jordan, Áine McGuinness, Rita McCarthy, Ray McCarthy, Ethna McQuillan and Group Members

Lighting: Richard Norman-Wright

Sound: Ronald Jones  

Wardrobe Co-ordinator: Máire Keogh

Front of House: Áine McGuinness, Martine Healy and Group Members

Publicity and Rehearsal Photographs: Kevin O' Malley

Poster & Programme: rjgraphics ltd