Kilkenny Arts Festival’s Theatre Strand (video)

Myself (Ken) and John are on the ground again during this year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival and we’ll be throwing a Devious Theatre eye over the performances on offer between August 6th and 15th. John had a look at what the strand offers already but I had the chance to catch up with curator Tom Creed in Dublin recently for more of an insight into this year’s theatre and dance program. Give it a watch.

A Midsummer Night At Set

John wrote about the upcoming Dreamstuff 10 programme, the big one-night-only show in September featuring a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For the ex-dreamstuff and now Devious heads among us, it was the first taste of Shakespeare for the group and so it holds a place in our wee hearts. It also seems to be a popular choice at the moment with a touring production having hit Ballykeefe Amphitheatre in Kilkenny last week and another touring production (different company) hitting Set Theatre in Kilkenny this weekend.

I had a chat with director Ailish Leavy on the phone yesterday who is looking to spread the word about their pending performance in Kilkenny, so spread the word we will. And let it be known too to other theatre companies that we can do this kind of thing for you if you find yourself treading the boards in the Marble City.

So it happens then that the Sycamore Street Theatre Company are peforming William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Set Theatre on John Street this coming Saturday night. It’s nice to see some more theatre going back into the space, our own troupe having taken up residency in Set for our productions of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist (December 200) and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! (March 2010).

If you want the full rundown on the show (if you’ve never heard of it previously), check out the details here.

Sycamore Street Theatre Company was founded in 2009 by Eoin Langford, Ailish Leavy, Julie Liston, Jennifer O’Neill and Suzanne McLoughlin. You can also find them on Facebook.

Most importantly thought, their production is on this Saturday night, it’s in Set, tickets are €20/€15 and can be booked by phoning Langton’s on 056-7765133. Online booking is available for the remainder of the Midsummer Night’s Dream tour which kicks off proper this Thursday night at the Mount Wolseley Hotel in Tullow, Co. Carlow, performance starting at 8pm. For more on the company you can contact 087-9034164 or 087-1260590.

DLI Summer School Bursary

News from our good friends at the Arts Office. In a time when practicing artists may still be feeling a financial pinch, and a week-long drama bursary available, it would be worth your while checking out what’s on offer with the DLI’s Summer School for 2010.

Kilkenny County Council Arts Office in partnership with the Drama League of Ireland is offering a week long Summer School workshop to one practitioner domiciled in Kilkenny.

The aim of the Bursary is to promote and foster all aspects of amateur drama in Kilkenny, both acting and emerging amateur drama practitioners, in giving them an opportunity to work intensively on a drama course alongside others in an idyllic setting at the University of Limerick campus.

The Drama League of Ireland Summer School will facilitate participant’s development while furthering their knowledge and experience in dealing with other professionals involved in the drama world.

Closing date for receipt of completed applications for both Bursaries is no later than 4pm on Friday 7th May 2010.

For further details and application forms regarding all of the above please contact: Niamh Finn, Arts Administrator, Kilkenny County Council Arts Office, No. 76, John Street, Kilkenny. T: 056 779 4138 E: niamh.finn@kilkennycoco.ie

Application forms can also be downloaded from www.artlinks.ie (News Section) / www.kilkennycoco.ie/services/arts

Life Shop Till You Drop

Another fine week for theatre in Kilkenny with The Mouse That Roared having opened in the Watergate earlier in the week and another touring production opening tomorrow night in Set Theatre. Here’s the skinny…

Following four sell-out National tours from 2007 to 2009, Life Shop till you Drop! will start its fifth nationwide tour in April 2010.

Life Shop till you Drop! is the Sassy Girl’s Self-Help Solution.

Ailish McGovern is an unfulfilled Recruitment Consultant. For Ailish life would be perfect if she had a marriage proposal, a glamorous job and most importantly won Irish Tatler Woman of the Year. And so she selects 2009 as the year in which she will transform her life, by applying all of the instructions and mantras of self-help gurus.

Join Ailish, as she goes speed dating, feng shui’s her 100% mortgaged apartment and targets the perfect boyfriend, using the New York manual ‘Your soul mate is out there and missing you.’ Next on her hit list is taking over her boss’ job using ‘The work secrets only successful people know!’

However it seems that no self-help book that she has studied, teaches that pride comes before a fall. A cautionary tale, or more likely, a wickedly fun spoof on our love of going life shopping.

Life Shop till you Drop begun life in January 2007 in Bewleys Café Theatre Dublin. Thus far it has played four National Tours, over 100 performances and enjoyed successful tours to Abu Dhabi, the Cork
Midsummer Festival, Belfast’s Out to Lunch Festival, Dun Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre, The Belltable Arts Centre Limerick, The Helix DCU, Draoicht Blanchardstown, The Civic Theatre Tallaght, Galway, Navan, Roscommon, Wexford, Virginia, Carrick on Shannon, Drogheda, Dundalk, Longford, Tipperary, Birr, Greystones, Tinahely, Monaghan and Naas. It will tour Ireland on a fifth National Tour from April 2010.

Tickets for Life Shop Till You Drop can be booked at Set Theatre / Langtons by phoning 056-7765133. Doors open 8pm and tickets are priced €13. Check the Wonder

Review: Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! (Munster Express)

The following review appears in The Munster Express, by Liam Murphy. Published on Thursday, March 25th.

I don’t really know how The Devious Theatre Company in Kilkenny can produce such consistent high quality and exciting theatre events time after time, without significant funding and still offer seats at the lowest prices. But they do and they continue not only to impress but amaze with sure fire theatre that carries no baggage and much hard work linked to admirable ambition.

A blisteringly funny and scathing production of Daro Fo’s seventies Italian social farce Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! At the Set Theatre in Langton’s was a tour de force, a tour de farce and a gobsmacking energetic production with five excellent actors, an innovative director, some excellent costumes, a clever set and a technical team to impress.

Devious brought this social comedy right up to date with a scathing slap at current Irish problems and yet maintained the framework and subversive intent of the author Dario Fo.

The pace never flagged to unfold a fast action scenario that when prices went up, housewives took action and began mass shoplifting. When transport prices increased workers brought the system to a halt and this mayhem found expression in a marital comedy where two wives steal all around them and conceal their swag under their coats and in every space they can find in small utilitarian flats.

A police raid forces the women to convince an impressionable policeman that Margherita is pregnant and in short time the crazy husbands who spout anti-Communist guff arrive home to break-neck craziness.

This was excellent ensemble playing with lots of modern comedic techniques mixed with commedia Del arte and cinematic references.

Angela Barrett and Hazel Fahy carried the plot along as the two wives and Ken McGuire was splendid as the bewildered Giovanni with a blinder of a performance from Ross Costigan as Luigi with a rock and roll hairstyle like a Grease quiff.

David Thompson once impressed hugely as at least four characters in a master class of physical theatre and timing. John Morton was an inspirational director and Lucy McKenna’s costume design was a wonderful feature of this production.

Check the review here on Munster-Express.ie (tell them what you think!)

White Lies, Tall Tales… and Shopping

The following appears in this week’s Kilkenny People (Section 2, page 30, week ending Friday March 19th).

There is a famous scene from an episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel go to work on an assembly line in a candy factory. Caught off guard by an ever-faster conveyor belt from which they are supposed to be wrapping chocolates, the overwhelmed pair soon resort to stuffing their mouths, their blouses and their hats – anything to get them out of this tight spot. The laughs pile up as well, as the situation becomes more and more outrageous.

This was precisely the 1950s sitcom spirit captured by the Devious Theatre Company’s production of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! in the Set Theatre from Wednesday to Sunday of last week. In this case, it was shopping that piled up, followed by white lies and tall tales that stretched and stretched and stretched…

It all begins with an innocent trip to the supermarket by Antonia (Angela Barrett), who joins a group of women revolting against rising prices by paying half-nothing, or nothing at all, for the products. Arriving home, however, she realised that her husband Giovanni (Ken McGuire) “would rather starve to death than eat stolen food”. So she convinces her friend Margherita (Hazel Fahy) to hide some of the produce under her jacket – a fine idea, except that it makes her appear heavily pregnant, much to the surprise of her husband Luigi (Ross Costigan). The long arm of the law (a Sergeant and an Inspector played by David Thompson, who quadruples as an Undertaker and an Old Man) then sets out to catch the culprits across the city of Milan.

“It’s not a story, it’s an epic”, Antonia says at the outset, a promise that the bright-hued production lived up to through out.

Devious Theatre is known for its impeccable attention to detail, from costumes and sets to programmes and promotions, and in this case every exaggerated gesture, every mirrored movement, every raised eyebrow, every pregnant moan was expertly executed, so that by the time the ‘pregnant’ Margherita and Antonia are lying on the floor, struggling in turns – and in vain – to sit upright with their large ‘bellies’, you’d feel you should be ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing) along with them.

The idea of the play is that people should stand up and do things for themselves instead of waiting for someone else to lead the way – which is exactly what Devious Theatre has always done.

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Our thanks to Tess Felder for the words.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! : In Photos

While we gather our thoughts, write the cheques and count up the bruises from last week’s five-night run of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, we’ll direct you over to our Flickr account where we’ve just added a host of new photos from the show.

The photos were taken either on the Friday or Saturday night of the production and appear courtesy of Pat Moore (Kilkenny Advertiser / Kilkenny Alive).

And while we’re here, sure Happy St. Patrick’s day to everyone

Go check out the photos.

And So We Face The Final Curtain

The curtain comes down tonight on Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! The hard thing about local theatre is that you pour your heart and soul into the production and must come to a close after five nights. Sure enough, we’d be delighted to go on another week or more, or take the production on the road, but for the moment anyway, tonight is the final night of performance for our first major production of 2010.

It’s been a fantastic week thus far with some great audience nights, plenty of laughs, cheeky adlibs, high energy deliveries and loads more besides.

When all is done and dusted after tonight’s performance, we’ll also have drawn our Dario Fo Season to a close. What started with Accidental Death Of An Anarchist and finishes with Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! has kept the Devious committee members on their collective toes for the past seven months. It’s been a fantastic learning experience, a fantastic development experience but most importantly, it’s been an absolutely fantastic performance experience that we’ve been able to share with audience in Kilkenny across December and March.

So for one final night, we invite you to join us at Set Theatre on John Street in Kilkenny from 7:30pm for the final performance of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

The online ticket sales have closed but some tickets will be made available at the venue. To reserve in advance (up to 7pm) you can contact us on the back stage phone at 086-1048191.

Don’t Forget Your Online Tickets!

If you’ve purchased tickets for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! online, don’t forget to bring them with you on the night! Everyone who has purchased tickets online for the current run of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! will have been emailed PDF versions of their tickets including their name, details, and a wee barcode to scan your tickets. While we can check the online reservation system there on the night, we do ask that you bring the printed versions of your tickets with you to the venue in order to ensure quick entry.

While it’s nice and early, you can still get tickets for tonight’s performance before online sales close. Tickets are also available online (we hold a certain number back for online sales) for Saturday and Sunday and can be purchased via PayPal or credit card from our secure online ticket sales area.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! Opens

OPENING NIGHT for the show has come and gone and at time of writing we’ve got Steven sweeping the stage, Angela being tended to by Louise (makeup), the cast are in the green room costuming up and I (Ken) get to sit in the theatre and reflect on last night’s performance, with just over two hours to go to tonight’s.

So how did it go? From an actor’s perspective it went very well. The reactions from the audience were nothing short of fantastic (and thank you all to those who were at last night’s show). From the opening of the first act through flying doors, flying mustaches, millet soup, burst bags of pasta, exploding clocks and all the way to the rousing conclusion of the show, we couldn’t have asked for a better opening and, looking back on last night, I don’t think we could have anticipated it either.

Taking off the acting hat and switching on the producer’s hat, it was great to see last night take to the stage, then take off altogether. Front of house, back stage, makeup, costumes, sound, lights and more, everyone is packing their A-game for the week and that’s what we’re looking to deliver on all fronts.

The show has indeed opened, no blood this time (Accidental Death of an Anarchist did genuinely see glass smash and blood spill on the opening night) and we’ve got four more to go.

This is our first major production for 2010 and the conclusion of our Dario Fo season of works so we’d love to have you along. There are tickets available for each night (though by the sounds of things if you’re looking for tickets on Friday or Saturday, advance demand is quite high) and they can be booked by calling 056-7765133 (Langtons), dropping into Rollercoaster Records on Kieran Street in Kilkenny or you can order and print your tickets online here.

I mentioned on my own blog earlier that there is indeed free wifi available in Set Theatre so if you’re tweeting during the show or throwing anything out online, why not use the #cpwp tag to keep track of everything?

Note: For security purposes we’ve replaced the name of our makeup artist with “Louise”. Errr… yeah.

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