A Victimless Crime

Someone once said ‘Shoplifting is a victimless crime. Like punching someone in the dark’. That person was wrong, wrong, wrong!

Did you know that shoplifting effects 1 in 4 familes? Did you know that shoplifting is considered a ‘gateway crime’ and that shoplifters soon progress onto stealing from banks and baby snatching? Did you know that shoplifting has been identified as the cause of 3 major wars?

This ’self reduction’ movement isn’t about ‘empowerment’ ‘freedom’ or ‘repression’ it’s about crime! Committed by criminals! A criminal that could be lurking in YOUR family!

Don’t be afraid to rat them up! Whistleblower is a more honourable profession than shoplifter! Shoplifter’s are the very fleas of Satan! Let’s swat them TOGETHER!

So please, let us eradicate the greatest scourge in our society, victimes unite! Report all shoplifters! TODAY!

Don’t come crying to us when they descend on YOUR supermarket!

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! will run from Marc 10th – 14th in Set Theatre, Kilkenny. Tickets can be booked on 056 – 7765133. They might be shoplifted from such places as Rollercoaster Records, Kieran Street and Set Theatre Box Office, Langtons, John Street. And above here, on this very page. Buy now! Ignore touts!

Mmmmm…. Supermeat For Dogs!

Is your man like a dog when he gets in from a hard days work? Is he tired of wolfing down the same old tripe? Is his fur lacking a quality shine?

Don’t fret girls, you won’t be in the dog house anymore! Just give your man a tin of our best Supermeat and he’ll be a slobbering mess!

If it’s good enough for dogs, then it’s good enough for your best friend! Loyal husbands deserve some royal treatment when they return to the kennel so let him sink his canine’s into our juiciest Supermeat!

It’s like a pate for rich cats and dogs! And if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for your breadwinning pet!

The superest of meat for the lowest of prices, our special wholesome brand Supermeat is entirely affordable within your tight household budget! And if those hounds at the supermarket tinker with prices, then just howl your protests our way!

So ladies, give your man a treat, fork him out some Supermeat!

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! – Final Poster

We’re exactly one month away from our opening night of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and as we edge ever closer here’s the first peek at our cast in all their Technicolour glory! This will be the second part of our Dario Fo Season which last December saw us bring Accidental Death Of An Anarchist to the stage at Set Theatre in Kilkenny. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is a madcap marital meltdown from Italy’s master of farce. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! was written by the Nobel Prize winning playwright in 1974, inspired by the self reduction movement which saw working class Italian women take what they wanted from supermarkets, only paying what they could afford. Another of his trademark political farces, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay saw Fo tackling issues of inflation, unemployment, workers’ strikes and the unions, once more tied up in the framework of a wild, slapstick comedy.

Following on from our teaser, this latest poster has the entire cast present: Housewives Antonia and Margherita (Angela Barrett, Hazel Fahy) stand in a window frame, desperately attempting to rid themselves of some stolen groceries. Unbeknown to them, a police Sergeant (David Thompson) has scaled a quite unsafe and unsteady drainpipe as a hail of carrots, tin cans and olives rain down. Meanwhile, husbands to the housewives, Giovanni and Luigi (Ken McGuire, Ross Costigan) scale a broken washing line in an effort to aid in the commotion.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! will run from Wednesday 10 March to Sunday 14 March and tickets currently available from the Set Theatre box office in Langtons in John Street and Rollercoaster Records in Kieran Street. Tickets are also available to purchase online at tickets.devioustheatre.com For all details on the play and the full Dario Fo Season, stay tuned to this here website…

Congratulations, farewell and welcome…

Tuesday afternoon brought about the announcement of the 2010 Oscar® Nominations and when Anne Hathaway and Academy president Tom Sherak reached the category of “Best Animated Feature” and said the title The Secret of Kells, a thunderous uproar of exhilaration and celebration could be heard across Kilkenny and in the Devious Theatre camp! Paul Young (who has previously worked with us on Trainspotting and Stags and Hens) is producer on this wonderful film and is a founder of Kilkenny-based animation studio Cartoon Saloon. It also just so happens Paul was currently deep into rehearsals on our upcoming production of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

Unfortunately, and very understandably, Paul has had to leave our production and will spend the next month jetsetting on a whirlwind press tour for his movie. It’s hard to call this news bittersweet, as we are utterly thrilled for Paul and everyone at Cartoon Saloon but it is also sad to see him go. Paul (pictured above in makeup during a makeup test) approached his role with much gusto and had put in a gargantuan amount of work into rehearsals over the past weeks. We wish him, Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey and the crew at the Saloon the very best of luck on March 7th! We’ll cross all of our collective Devious fingers and toes and we hope a shiny, bald golden fella is brought back home.

Replacing Paul in the show will be David Thompson, a man who many will recognise as ‘The Madman’ from our previous production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Dario Fo Season continues with Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! running from 10-14 of March at Set Theatre, John Street Kilkenny. Tickets are on sale now.

2009 – A Year In Review

2009 proved to be quite an eventful year for us folks at The Devious Theatre Company. In previous years, we had set a template of one large scale show during the summer in June and a smaller scale show, usually following in late August. This year however, being the devious chaps and chappettes that we are, it’s fair to say we shook things up significantly…

STAGS AND HENS – 21-25 JULY
Things kicked off in May with a launch party at the Watergate Theatre for our production of Willy Russell’s Stags and Hens. The show itself is a viciously funny study of working class attitudes to marriage, love and ambition in dead end Liverpool of 1978. It also marked the first time the show was performed in Kilkenny and we were thrilled to be bringing it to the stage at the Watergate. The launch party got the ball rolling on our comprehensive promotional runup to the show with the release of a teaser poster and the announcement of our cast. We were delighted with the addition of some fresh faces to the cast as well as the return of some familiar ones. Along with the usual slew of promo photos and posters, we ventured into the realm of online video content, specifically a trailer and a handful of weblogs. We even made a brief appearance on Newstalk with Tom Dunne to talk about Kilkenny’s steadily growing hen party problems. Capping off the parade of promotion, was a seventies themed fundraiser night in Cleeres wherein everybody put their flares and platform shoes on and boogied the night away to some good ol’ disco, funk, glam and soul.

We set up camp in the Watergate Theatre on 19th of July and having constructed our set, ran tech and dress rehearsals and drank copious amounts of red bull – we were good to go. The show itself was a wonderful success. After the insanity of Trainspotting and the quirks of Smitten in 2008, it was nice to perform a conventional play – one that relied on the camaraderie of its cast of characters and the wit and humour of a man as renowned as Willy Russell. The feedback (both positive and negative) was superb, further helping to shape the company and give us an insight into our audiences.

Related Blog Posts:
Stags and Hens (and the rest of the summer)
Stags and Hens – Final Poster
The Stags – The Hens
70s Nite – Fundraiser Event
Stags and Hens Video Diary 1
Kav and Frances – Dave – Carol and Maureen – Robbie and Billy – Bernie and Eddy – Linda – The Roadie – The Blood Brothers
Stags and Hens Trailer
The Big Day Is Approaching
Follow Stags and Hens on Twitter, A Day Off
Settling Into The Theatre
Stags and Hens Interview (Listen)
Reaching the Midway Point
And So We Face The Final Curtain
Stags and Hens Wraps, Thanks
Some News Pics from Stags and Hens

SHAKESPEARE IN BITS – JUNE/OCTOBER/NOVEMBER
A slight deviation from the usual Devious output as we performed not once, but twice the works of the great Bard himself. Shakespeare In The House was a successful event that was held at Rothe House in collaboration with Young Irish Filmmakers, Dreamstuff Youth Theatre and Kilkenny 400. With production on Stags and Hens taking up all free time, it wasn’t possible for us to stage a full on Shakespeare production so we decided to do something to complement the fine work that will no doubt be done by the good thespians of Dreamstuff Youth Theatre.

The production was made up of various Shakespeare related sketches (Shakespeare’s editor and a 16th centruy version of the Bale rant with William Shakespeare walking in front of the ‘cantelbras’), some Shakespeare based works (The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead), some devised Shakespeare pieces, some monologues and a whole lot of nice little bridging devices between. It’s going to be a crash course in Shakespeare for the ADD generation. Overall it was a great success for us. So much so that we returned during the Rockfall Festival in October to perform a limited run in Cleeres over three nights all in aid of Enable Ireland and The O’Neill Centre.

Shakespeare In Bits returned to the stage once again in November. Not on a Kilkenny stage however, but on the stand-up stage at the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn in Dublin for one night only. Hopefully we can return to the capital soon for further Devious antics.

Related Blog Posts:
New Show: Shakespeare In Bits
In Bits – Stephen Colfer – John Doran – Eddie Murphy
Shakespeare In Bits this weekend
Shakespeare In Bits Trailer
Shakespeare In Bits – Day 1
Shakespeare In Bits – Day 2
Shakespeare In Pictures, Media
Shakespeare In Dublin

Dario Fo Season and ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST – 2-6 DECEMBER
Directly off the back of the Rockfall Festival performance of Shakespeare In Bits, we made our announcement that we would be performing a Season of plays by Italian playwright Dario Fo at the newly opened Set Theatre. Set had just opened during the Arts Festival and it was thrilling for us to be performing in such a new and exciting venue. Two of his most revered plays would make up the season: Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

His best known play Accidental Death Of An Anarchist opened the season on December 2nd to Sunday December 6th. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of an anarchist from a fourth floor police window, the policemen involved are having difficulties remembering the details of the event. That is, until a nameless, deranged madman shows up and proceeds to tie the authorities around his fingers in a master class performance of utter logic. In the runup to the show we once again bombarded local media with promotional imagery, did live readings of portions of the script on radio and gave our cast members a good interrogation or two.

The run went incredibly for us and we were ecstatic with the response that it received. Audiences were immensely enthusiastic about the show with consistent belly laughs and an equal amounts of applause. The audiences were very generous and very receptive to something that looks so starkly different from anything they’ve seen before in Kilkenny. Local press too were impressed with very kind reviews from Kilkenny People and with The Munster Express even saying it was a “furious tour de force of biting satire and a comedic rant that dazzled with daring” and saying of David Thompson that he impressed more than Tom Vaughan Lawlor in Arturo Ui! Marvelous stuff.

The Dario Fo Season will continue in 2010 with Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! Further details will be available on this site very, very soon

Related Blog Posts:
Presenting a Season of Dario Fo
Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Set Theatre
Accidental Death of an Anarchist – Final Poster
Director’s Blog: Adapting The Text
Chasing The Madman
Final Week Rehearsals
Interrogating – David Thompson – Ken McGuire – Alan Butler – Sean Hackett – John Morton – Simone Kelly
Who Is Dario Fo? (And why does he stick it to the man?)
Accidental Death Opens
Through The Square Window

ACCOLADES FOR DEVIOUS THEATRE IN 2009
Just to briefly touch upon some nice recognition the company received in 2009 – The year opened with an article by John Cleere in the Kilkenny Advertiser saying of us that a Devious show is a “Guaranteed good night out” and that Devious was the only word in Kilkenny theatre in 2008. We had a lot to live up to in 2009! In February the good people at the Irish Blog Awards shortlisted us for Best Arts and Culture blog. Unfortunately we lost out on the night, but it’s still a mighty fine accolade nonetheless. Here’s to next year! Speaking of mighty fine accolades, our radio broadbasted podcast of War of the Worlds was nominated for Best Drama at the PPI National Radio Awards. The Devious crew put on their swankiest of gladrags and tipped along to Lyrath Estate Hotel for the glitzy ceremony. In the end, we brought home the Bronze award and were utterly thrilled with such recognition which will hopefully give us and KCLR a fantastic boost and the impetus to continue creating further radio dramas.

Related Blog Posts:
A Guaranteed Good Night Out
We’re Off To The Irish Blog Awards
We’re Nominated for a PPI Award for Best Drama
Bronze Award for The Devious Theatre Company, KCLR

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS FOR 2010!!!
Tomorrow marks the first day of the new year. A new decade even! As we here at The Devious Theatre Company work away on pre-production for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! we’re shuffling around our schedule for the year. Who knows what other tricks we have in store? Stay tuned to this here website for all the news and be sure to follow us on twitter. We tweet like madmen, so we do.

In conclusion, it’s been an incredible and productive year for us. There’s been some downs but mostly ups. We seriously could not do it without you, our lovely lovely audience and we hope to see you all again real soon.

Thank you sincerely from the very bottom of our hearts for all your support and see you in the new year!

From all of us at,
The Devious Theatre Company

Accidental Death of an Anarchist – Final Poster

We’re just under three weeks away from the opening night of Accidental Death of an Anarchist and as rehearsals pick up speed and we crawl ever closer to the stage at SET, we are happy to present to you good theatre folk, our final poster!

Following on from our teaser, our final poster has the entire cast of characters present: Maria Feletti (Simone Kelly) grips onto the shoulders of the Constable (Sean Hackett); Inspector Bertozzo (John Morton) grabs onto the rope for dear life; Inspector Pisani (Alan Butler) and the Superintendant (Ken McGuire) furiously spit venom and outrage at the man responsible for their gravitational predicament – The Madman (David Thompson) who peers out the fourth story window of the police station, grin on his face and scissors in his hand.

In the run up to the show, we will continue to release further exciting promotional materials that will hopefully give a greater insight into the show and introduce you to the characters and world of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist will run from Wednesday December 2nd to Sunday December 6th and tickets will soon be made available from the Set Theatre box office in Langtons and Rollercoaster Records in Kieran Street. For all details on the play and the full Dario Fo Season, stay tuned to this here website…

Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Set Theatre

The Devious Theatre Company are launching their Dario Fo Season with the maniacal murder mystery Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, arguably the Nobel Prize winning dramatist’s most famous play.

Written in 1970, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist was inspired by events that took place in Italy in 1969 when an anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli fell – or was thrown – from the fourth floor window of a Milan police station. He had been accused of a campaign of bombing, of which he was later found innocent. The resultant scandal uncovered a system rife with corruption and intensified public rage at the government. Intensification of public rage is something that Dario Fo is a master of with his work challenging church, government and the authorities in Italy for over 50 years.

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist takes place as an enquiry into the anarchist’s death is causing the policemen involved to have some difficulties remembering the details of the event. That is, until a nameless deranged madman shows up and proceeds to tie the authorities around his fingers in a master class performance of utter logic. The cast includes Alan Butler, Sean Hackett, Simone Kelly, Ken McGuire, John Morton and David Thompson playing the famed role of the shape shifting Madman. The production is directed by John Morton, who previously co-directed Trainspotting for Devious Theatre.

As is usually the case with adaptations of Dario Fo, this production will look at the events of the play through the prism of modern Ireland and the corruption and scandals inherent in our own political systems. Employing the comedic methods of commedia dell’arte and slapstick as used by Dario Fo, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist is an uproariously funny farce which rallies against political injustice and corruption.

Above is the teaser poster for the production which pays homage to the late, great Saul Bass whose look and style have influenced our show. Over the next couple of weeks, we will continue to roll out further promotional materials and some surprises. Stay tuned to the site for further details.

This will be the first play to be staged in the Set Theatre, John Street and we at The Devious Theatre Company are proud to be the first group to utilise Kilkenny’s finest new venue. They will be returning in March of 2009 with the next part of their season Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist will run from Wednesday December 2nd to Sunday December 6th and tickets will soon be made available from the Set Theatre box office in Langtons and Rollercoaster Records in Kieran Street. For all details on the play and the full Dario Fo Season stay tuned this site.

70’s Nite – Fundraiser Event

A night of fiendishly good music and dancing in Cleeres Pub, Kilkenny. It’s a 70’s fancy dress with prizes for the best get up. There’s enough food to feed a small dancing army. The theatre will be decked out with glitterball and ample dancing room. And from T-Rex to Bowie, Stevie Wonder to Chic and Sex Pistols to The Undertones, enough musical treats to cover the full spectrum of the decade that fashion neglected. Or blessed if you so like.

It’s all in aid of raising funds for our upcoming production of Willy Russell’s 70’s set classic Stags and Hens and all other future endeavours. So please donate kindly! See you there!

Stags and Hens – Final Poster

We’re almost a month away from the opening night of Stags and Hens and as we edge ever closer, we hope to roll out some exciting promotional material for the show! Presented here is our final poster for the show which sees the cast assembled in a make-shift, multi-coloured grid of toilet cubicles – each stall telling a story of it’s own.

The poster features almost all of our principle characters: Robbie (John Morton) and Billy (Stephen Colfer) have a bit of banter, Carol (Lynsey Moran) attempts to comfort an overly emotional Maureen (Mairead Kiernan), Francis (Maria Murray) tries to catch a glimpse of just what Kav (Geoff Warner Clayton) is scrawling on the wall, Eddie (Ken McGuire) and Bernadette (Ciara Donegan) do a bit of flirting, all the while, Dave (John Doran) the groom lies passed out on the floor and bride-to-be Linda (Roisin O Reilly) sits alone, pondering what the hell it’s all about.

In the run up to the show, we hope to take a closer look at each cubicle and get to know our cast a bit better, so keep an eye on DeviousTheatre.com for future updates.

Stags and Hens by Willy Russell, takes to the stage at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny from the 21st to the 25th of July at 8pm nightly. Tickets are on sale now and can be booked at +353 56 61674.

SMITTEN – Tommy and Daffney

“I’m dancing and singing in the rain…”
A Short Story from Smitten

Tommy’s head was spinning with the stories. All the stories he was hearing from his friends about this girl, this girl who came from Kilkenny and was apparently all that. But he just couldn’t figure it out. As he sat, cradling a can of Coke at that party in Loughboy, that one word kept spinning through his head. Beguiling. Beguiling. Beguiling. That’s what they say she is.

And that one name kept spinning through his head. Daffney Molloy.

And poor Tommy, so numb and jaded and without spark for so long now. Sure, isn’t it his own fault? For all the stupid drugs he took for years and the pointless drinking and the job’s dumped and the college drop outs and the depression and the hell he put his body through. There he is, all quarter of a century of him, finally coming out of his early 20’s fugue with his dick that just won’t work, and he meets a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in countless stories and myths and legends.

And he feels something… fizzle. He’s looking for the simple stuff right now. Stuff that will help him get his bearings in life. Maybe a job, maybe go back to college, maybe some shoes? But most of all, he’d like a nice girl to do the simple things with, go to the pictures and maybe a bit of lie down kissing? If it’s not too much hassle of course, I don’t want to cause any hassle, I just want someone to give me a spark. That’s all he’s asking for and it’s not too much to ask for is it?

And as he sits there with his little fried brain trying to work, his friends keep on spinning the yarns about this mystery girl who’s back in town and has them smitten like kittens.

Apparently one time Skeet Keating walked up to her in the Market Cross and just asked her out. She was 16 at the time with black hair tied in pigtails and baggy Hobo jeans and she had her nose pierced but that’s not what matters. What matters is that little Skeet plucked up the courage to ask out Daffney Molloy. And she just looked at him with those piercing blue eyes and asked him why on earth would he want to go out with her and could he give her 3 good reasons why he was asking her out. And he coughed and he spluttered and he couldn’t think of anything. And with a little smile and a wink, she just left him standing there.

Motion. Slow motion. That’s how she moves. Stevey can remember the time he came home from college and went into Dunnes Stores to buy deodorant for his sweaty Bus Eireann afflicted armpits and he saw her shopping with her mother. He saw her move through the fruit and veg section with a grace he’d never seen before in a girl, like she was floating or something. She had messy brown hair with blonde streaks in it and a bright yellow and green top and holding that head of lettuce, he swore she swayed it into her mother’s trolley. That’s how she moves. With the motion of the world in her body.

That’s how she moved the time Kevin saw her that night in Cleere’s. It was rare enough to see her out but she just waltzed through the place without a care in the world. Maybe she was looking for someone but maybe, just maybe, she was waltzing for waltzing’s sake. She had long straight red hair and pink glasses and tattered jeans that hung nicely on her hips and oh how those hips moved. Before he could even get his bearings, she had waltzed away on her own. And even though he kept an eye out for the rest of the night, he never saw her or indeed, any waltzing from the other girls. They just didn’t waltz.

Tommy listened to these stories intently. He was as intrigued as she was beguiling. Well, that’s what they said she was anyway.

And at the exact same time Tommy sat at that party, a girl stood on the Parade in the lashings of rain, sheltering herself in the entrance way of the Left Bank. She was staring out at that pissing rainy Kilkenny night with a smile on her face. People were running for cover into pubs, doorways, taxis, anywhere they could protect their wet bodies from the thumping power of the rain. Cackling hen nights getting their devil horns soaked and checked shirts getting drenched and dolly girls getting their well kept hair doused. Everybody wants to be dry. And why oh why would they want to be dry, thinks the girl.

And with that, she jumps down off the steps into the street and pulls her umbrella up.

‘Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doodle doo doo’ she sings to herself as she puts her hand out to feel the rain drops. And with that she pulls her umbrella back down and skips across the Parade, as if she’s dancing specifically towards the little green man across the road. A big smile spreads across her face as the raindrops spread down her smiling face. People look very confused at the sight of this girl, dancing happily through the lashing rain.

She skips across by the bank and waves her hand at a grumbling sham couple and then skips lightly over one of the flower pots before outstretching her arms to embrace the downpour. She spins her umbrella around and does a little tap dance as she passes the Book Centre, cradling that black brolley as if it were dancing along with her.

With a kick, she sends the umbrella into the air, it spins for an age before landing right in her mitts. And with that, she launches herself onto the road and spins her brolley as if she were a one woman merry go round. Cars beep and honk at her but she’s not doing any harm is she? Oh no, it’s only dancing, isn’t it?

She balances precariously on the footpath outside Goods and kicks all the puddles up into the air. Up they go! Splish splash splish! Kick, kick, stamp, stamp in the puddles and she’s soaked through and through and doesn’t care, not a jot. She’s happy to be home and with all the sadness and sickness and rain everywhere, isn’t it so much better to be dancing?

A guard stops in front of her, a big thick necked country bullock and he folds his arms crossly. The girl stops her splishing and splashing and looks apologetically at him. She shrugs her shoulders and turns and hands her umbrella to a passing elderly man, who takes it bemused. And with that, she saunters off towards the Town Hall.

And who is she?

No one knows.

Tickets for Smitten are on sale NOW in Rollercoaster Records, Kieran Street and they are 10EURO. The show runs August 20 – 23 and starts 8pm nightly. For more information and updates, check out www.devioustheatre.com

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