Liz and Lar by Paul Barry at Garter Lane

By guest blogger John Hartery 

Paul Barry premiered  his sequel to The  Glass this week in Garter Lane.  His first play traced the working lives and loves of a bunch of Waterford factory workers against the background of the slow decline of the crystal business. This production, again is from,  All Of A   Sudden Theatre Company. It's wonderful to see another  new work hot on the heels of the Red Kettle recent premiere. 

Of the many colourful characters in the very funny The Glass the most memorable was Lar Power  the life and soul of the ensemble. It was inevitable there would be a sequel. We wondered how life had treated him?

The new play, Liz and Lar, brings a different Lar. Firstly, it's played by a different actor the excellent Fionnan Dunphy  and secondly, life has moulded him. He's now unemployed and embroiled with the dole office over his 'few pound' . He spends  his day at the kitchen table taking  care of routine household chores allocated by his wife Liz and hosting a succession of visitors. He is a kind of Waterford everyman.  Liz is played by Anne-Marie Collins in a a fine performanc. She  is tired of being a human incubator, 6 down and one to go!

The second half had a better   tone. It's set in a hospital ward after our man suffers a mishap in a certain named doctor's surgery following  a discrete procedure. Terry Grant plays an hilarious cameo role as Lar's friend who is a combination of gossip and unreliable medical reporter (ignorant cyst and grout!).

More brand new drama

Barry constantly mines the glass factory for much nostalgia and memories and clearly he  has much to say on its demise. It's wonderful to see a play peppered with everyday Waterford City references; Doyle St, Johnie Walker's chips, Billy McCarthy's voice and Ballybricken accents -'gwayoutofit'! 

Mayor's Walk cusine gets  into the script

This was quite a different piece to The Glass and whilst it lacked the narrative breath and ensemble synergy and fun of his earlier work,  in Liz and Lar  Barry balanced the poignancy of Lar's plight in the first half with the great humour in the second. What will Lar do next?

A very entertaining evening of local, new and amateur drama. The  production deserves great support. It runs till September 29th

Venue note: as ever excellent staff and volunteers at Garter Lane and how nice to offer a complementary pre-theatre drink to all.

A Florentine Hive of Activity at Waterford Writers Weekend

Lto R: R Coady, B Knowles, Marion Ingoldsby, J Loftus , P Sirr, M Roper, M Nolan,  J Ennis , E Sweeney , B Hanlon , N Crowley  M Coady upper Poets , composers, musicians

The ebb and flow of tides
and bedded silt
by wharves and quays
M Coady

Following fast on the heels of the Ennis Book Club Festival, I travelled to the South East for another literary event, the annual  Waterford Writers Weekend. As I drove down, I tuned in to Arena, the arts magazine programme on RTE radio1 where local producer, Jacqui Corcoran had assembled a gallery full of interesting guests in the semi public space of the the Book Centre, a bookshop housed in a former cinema, all with a connection to the festival . Beginning with academic and author, Brian Keenan,  he told presenter Sean Rocks in a compelling interview, why he returned recently to the Lebanon, where he was incarcerated for four and a half years. Will we ever forget a pale and gaunt Keenan emerging to address the media so eloquently after his release in 1990. Poets, Peter Sirr, Mark Roper and writing consultant and festival organiser Vanessa O Loughlin were among the writers who gave an insight into the festival. In contrast to the Ennis Book Club Festival the emphasis is clearly on the writer as opposed to the reader with a large selection of workshops facilitating active participation in the craft.

Gourmand et gourmets 

The Book Centre was also the venue for a discussion on food writing with popular local chef, Martin Dwyer now happily relocated to the Languedoc where he runs a Chambre d'hote . An active writer, Martin writes a very entertaining blog about his French experiences. Also on the panel were Catherine Cleary, restaurant critic of the Irish Times and author Jane Travers who did a good job of posing open questions to generate some good talking points although at times there was stiff competition from the nearby junior reading area.

Publishing Supremo O Loughlin

While they don't call it the sunny south east for nothing, the weather was simply stunning,  the sort of weather where your mother might hunt you out to play rather than sit in a corner reading a book, much less writing one. Nevertheless, there was full house at Vanessa O Loughlin's insightful 'Getting Published' workshop which was a mine of information on the whole business of publishing.

The real draw of the  weekend for me was the performance of the choral piece celebrating Waterford's enduring maritime tradition, specially commissioned for the opening of the Tall Ships Festival in Waterford 2011 and  one of my selected highlights of 2011 With all the international sailors returned home, there was a sense that this reprise was for Waterford people to savour . In the elegant space of the 18th century Christchurch Cathedral, the stirring and eloquent lines of five poets were heard clearly,  read by each poet in turn and then sung by the 200 strong choir with representatives from no less than 40 choral groups in the region, to settings by five composers. The original orchestral score was  reduced for piano to good effect . Finally there was a screening of a  short documentary by John Loftus with interviews with the poets and composers on their creative experience. (This is soon to be available on line, I am told)  A truly wonderful collaboration of the spheres of literature and music ,  one I was proud to be associated with at the first performance .   In the words of conductor Niall Crowley,  'Waterford was a veritable Florentine hive of activity' for  the  endeavour and the event was  a worthy finale to round off  a splendid Waterford Writer's Weekend.

My review of the first performance of 'Come the Sails' at the opening of Tall Ships Festival here

here, now, this very moment
in flowing time,
within this harbour
and this haven  Ml Coady

Trip to 'Brighton' for silver anniversary

It is said prophets are not recognised in their own land . The same cannot be said of playwright Jim Nolan in the South Eastern capital, Waterford. Weeks after his play , the Gods Are Angry Miss Kerr had a run at the Theatre Royal,  his most recent play Brighton  (premiered in 2010) was reprised in the commissioning theatre, Garter Lane in the playwrights home town marking Nolan's 25th anniversary of writing for theatre.
 There was a full house on Saturday night for the final night before the company embark on a ten theatre national tour with the author himself in attendance. 

I enjoyed this production under director Ben Barnes and there were strong performances from Andrew Macklin, Gillian Hanna and Christopher Saul.  I hesitate before committing to a whole evening in the company of a relatively small cast and you couldn't help hoping the malevolent Father Mackey or the octagenarian bottom pincher might make an appearance but the production was sure footed and the writing had plenty of wit and humour to stop you itching for the remote control.  I particularly liked English actor, Christopher Saul's voice which had the resonant quality to it  one would expect from an RSC thespian.

In Brighton, in tandem with the sense of an ode to the the triumph of the human spirit, Nolan returns to  a theme explored in The Salvage Shop, namely  the therapeutic power of amateur music  making. Lily is propelled out of her death bed and  anti social Jack is galavanised by the project of forming a choir. Jack's  appeal to Lily has the same quality as Syvie's speech about the imperfect performance in the local town hall being just as important as a Pavarotti concert in one of the world's best venues, a sentiment which has given me much encouragement over the years. It is the striving is the thing , not the end result which matters.

I was reminded of my visits to Cahercalla Community Hospital in Ennis and of the late Jim Cleary who played his accordion every day until he passed away last year at the age of 93. Even as he belted out  The Bucks of Oranmore or the Stone Outside Dan Murphy's Door in a faltering tempo, I had a sense that there was just as much heart to his performance as any on the  Glór stage and never failed to be moved by his playing, his audience just as important as any at a glittering first night,  

Lily's glee at her initiation into the world of gambling recalled  my own  introduction to the world of yankees and trebles and trips to the betting shop when the tedium of the routine of lab work at a Dublin hospital was relieved by the  daily betting routine around a Cheltenham Race week. What fun!

Afficionados in the audience included local writer and broadcaster Éibhear Walsh and his mother. The Cork based acadamic  tells me that he is looking forward to reading from his  memoir, Cissie's Abbatoir  in the study hall of his old alma mater, De La Salle College for the forthcoming Imagine Festival.   Contralto Anne Woodworth spoke to me about her current academic research project into music and health. We also spotted troubadour Francie White who gave a memorable performance during last years festival and will be performing again this year with Dunmore East guitar supremo Gerry Power. 

Link below to Una Kealy's review for the Irish Theatre Magazine
http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Brighton