2004

Snow White & the Seven Unfeasibly Large Dwarfs
  
  An Evening with Dr.Chekhov

Greatest Hits - Red Haired Mary

Snow White & the Seven Unfeasibly Large Dwarfs

Directed by Doug Fox Roberts

 Reviewed by Sheila Reilly (Longford Leader)

"Food poisonous food,
Green beetles and cow turds,
While I'm in the mood,
Pus, yellow as mustard,
Wolf bottoms and rat eyebrows.
Fresh bogeys and dandruff
Something my old cat has spewed
On Uncle Bert's bumfluff"

It may sound like a heady concoction but Sunday's audience of Snow White and the Seven (Unfeasibly Large) Dwarfs loved it. This little ditty, sung by an extremely Wicked Stepmother, comes from the pen of Doug Fox Roberts who also devised the cracking script for this year's Panto production at Backstage Theatre. The show opened to a packed (and very excited) house on Sunday afternoon and runs each night until Saturday January 31 by which time the Unfeasibly Large Dwarfs and fellow cast will certainly deserve to live happily ever after. 

Panto audiences are notoriously fickle but the young audience at the Backstage on Sunday gave this one a resounding thumbs up. Audience participation levels were high with maximum boos and hisses reserved for the aforementioned Wicked Stepmother (Maureen Dunne) who clearly relished in being the most hated person in Backstage Theatre for two hours. 

Once again Doug Fox-Roberts has created a wonderful fast-paced show with a script cleverly targetted to all members of the family. The show opens with the two-headed N A Rator (Declan Donohoe and Eileen Murphy) who move proceedings along with equal measure of witty asides and slapstick comedy. 

The tale begins with the Good Queen (Dee Butt) praying for a beautiful baby and no sooner than she her wish is granted, she dies. By the time that child, Snow White (Janette Gilmore), reaches her sixteenth birthday she has acquired a very Wicked Stepmother who is determined to rid the Kingdom of her beautiful stepdaughter. And so the story of Snow White unfolds. 

Throw in a Spanish nanny with a serious moustache problem (Orlaith McLoughlin), a wonderfully authoritative magic mirror (Pat Joe McLoughlin) with a wicked repertoire of rhymes and a bumbling huntsman (Jim Fisher) and we embark on a journey that takes our heroine Snow White to the depths of the forest where she encounters seven unfeasibly large dwarfs - Farty, Wonky, Bossy, Warty, Clumsy, Narky and Porky aka Paul Higgins, Alan Kiernan, Mark Johnston, Peter Kilemade, Micheal Wall, Niall Gannon and John Kelly. Unfeasibly large they may be but they're not stupid and they know how to spot a potential housekeepeer.  So soon Snow White is knee-deep in socks and underwear while simultaneously preparing lunch for her seven charges.

In the end the Wicked Stepmother gets her way and she kills  Snow White with poisoned apple. However all is not lost and enter the loquacious Prince Charming (Mark Loftus) who  develops a cunning plan to rouse Snow White from her deathly slumber.

He creates a clever diversion using the Seven Dwarfs who dress up as top girl band and perform Beyonce's Crazy in Love in what is truly one of the most hilarious scenes ever to hit the local stage.  It is no exaggeration to say that this rendition of the hit song had the young audience dancing in the aisles. 

Having saved Snow White, Prince Charming whisks her and her seven unfeasibly large friends off to his magic kingdom, where they undoubtedly reside in a very big palace for the rest of their days.

The Leader's 10 year old co-reviewer, herself a hardened thespian, deemed the show to be a great success and was particularly delighted with the costumes, especially Snow White's which she remarked "is exactly like the one she wears in the film".  The sets are also excellent and the entire cast gel together brilliantly giving a virtually flawless performance in a show that is as good, if not better, that any panto you'd see in Dublin theatre houses.  Don't miss it. 

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An Evening with Dr.Chekhov

Directed by Gus Hanley

Reviewed by Joe Flaherty (Longford Leader)

The local Backstage Theatre group did it again recently with a very successful staging of a series of one act plays entitled ‘An Evening With Dr Chekhov.’
The production ran for three nights at the Backstage and was directed by that gifted man of local theatre, Gus Hanley. It has been an express wish of his to bring the work of Chekhov to life locally and the reality for most of us is that the humour and cunning stagecraft of the Russian writer would have passed unbeknownst to most of us but for this production.

The Ardagh school teacher skilfully weaved together a series of plays from the writers and intertwined them with his own pieces of dialogue from one of our own local playwrights, Brendan Williams, who played a brilliant Dr Chekhov.
Williams has been one of the stars of the local stage in recent times and here again he very much emphasised the range of his talent and he engaged the audience brilliantly throughout.
Another of the real success stories of the Backstage in recent times has been the introduction of so many young faces and in particular young actors, making a successful transition from the group’s Youth wing.
This time we saw Erica Elkhershi, Patrina Prunty, James Duignan, Lisa Donaghy, Conan Casey and Rachel Nevin step up a level and they did so brilliantly.

This was a really sizeable undertaking for the Theatre Group in that it involved in excess of thirty people both on and off stage and that is a significant undertaking. As always the props, lighting and make-up were first class and all too often this is something that we forget to allude to.
Anne Egan is no stranger to the Backstage Theatre and she delivered a typically impressive performance in the opening play as the Mistress. She shared the stage with a very timid but brilliantly acted Julia, where the accolades go to Sandra Durkan.
The proposal made for one of the most entertaining pieces and it also features some of the group’s most popular and accomplished figures, namely John Kelly, Maureen Dunne and Mark Johnston, who like Williams, has been a real revelation.

In the Seduction, Peter and Celine Kilemade put on a foot perfect husband and wife performance and Peter then had to swap persona for The Sneeze, where he was a comical Cherbyakov.
The impressive Mrs Cherbyakov was Siobhan O’Neill whilst Paddy Phipps cut a dash as the General with his beautiful wife, Linda Boateng Mensah. It was great to see Linda on the big stage and her performance was acclaimed by many and likewise Funke Oyewole, who featured later in the evening. Both women came to the Group following a successful initiative and project at the local Women’s Centre where Backstage stalwart, Eileen Murphy, directed a play designed to educate against racism.

In ‘Smoking Is Bad For You’, Jim Davey was brilliant as the daft Professor and he worked very hard to pull off what was a very difficult piece. Niamh Donlon - on her big stage debut - had the taxing task of more or less sitting silent for twenty minutes (a truly remarkable feat). Thankfully we saw a little more of her acting skills in Scene Four, The Audition.
Christian Dann was hilarious as the Sailor in his scene and each production simply serves to emphasis the huge talent and ability that this young man possesses. He briefly fled the stage for the appearance of Mark Loftus, who expertly carried off the part of the thrifty policeman.
Local school teacher Liz Leavy was captivating as Nina Zarechnaya whilst Declan Donohoe was a hilarious Kistunov in the final scene.

All told, a great night’s entertainment but many in the audience were disappointed that the cast members did not come out on stage afterwards to enjoy the applause that they richly deserved. However that’s a very small gripe in regard to an otherwise splendid production.

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Greatest Hits

Directed by Peter Kilemade

Red Haired Mary

Directed by Gus Hanley

Reviewed by Robert Cox  (Longford Leader)

On Friday night the Backstage Theatre Group put on two one-act plays which saw the groups stalwarts perform a variety of different roles, in two sharply contrasting plays.

The first, Greatest Hits by Thomas McLoughlin, was an intense study of interplay between ‘friendship, trust and company policy’ as the blurb put it.

The second, Red Haired Mary adapted by Gus Hanley from a Lady Gregory comedy, was less overtly dramatic and more farcical, with an ensemble cast of 14. And as the football cliché goes, it was a game of two halves.

Greatest Hits which was directed by Peter Kilemade, suffered from a number of problems, most of which can be attributed directly to the script. At the start of proceedings we are introduced to Bobby and John, who are old friends who work for the same company, John in HQ, and Bobby in the field. For some reason the script skips around what the company is or does, gradually revealing that it is a Republican paramilitary organisation. While purposefully oblique at the start, this plot point is revealed mid-way through with little surprise for anybody in the audience and little fanfare.

The pretence grates, and adds nothing to proceedings as it can easily be seen through. The characters are somewhat clichéd, and hard to engage with, even though the actors’ portrayals - Brendan Williams as the brooding field agent Bobby, and Mark Johnston as the seemingly hapless desk jockey John - were without doubt the best thing about the play. Williams was his usual consistently watchable self, who gave new meaning to the phrase cold menace in his depiction of a borderline psychotic terrorist, Bobby.

Mark Johnston had the tough job of sharing the stage with the in-form Williams, and managed to survive intact. Although less polished than his colleague, the change in his character at the end when John betrays Bobby who is then off stage was carried off well. The role of the seemingly disaffected but underneath coldly calculating HQ is captured just about right.

But no matter how good the actors were, in the end the play just didn’t grip the audience, and more questions than answers were left in their minds. And not in a good way.

Fitting 14 people into one act of drama is some achievement, but making almost each character more memorable then the next is exceptional, and that is what happened with Red Haired Mary, directed by Gus Hanley.

The action of the play centres around the hilarious misunderstandings that occur due to the village gossiping about the half truth of one innocuous incident after a fair, when Jack Smith leaves his pitch fork behind him, and the unfortunate Bartley Fallon goes after him with it.

The way the story develops is that Bartley has gone after Jack with it and killed him, with a supposed affair between Bartley and Jack’s wife – the unseen but much maligned Red Haired Mary - being imagined from a snippet of a line of song Jack sings on his merry way.

The interesting aspect of the farce is that every time the truth seems likely to get out - when the new judge hears tell of the matter, when Mrs Fallon stands up for husband, and when the supposedly dead Jack Smith himself comes in wondering what the story is - the farce escalates even further.

The play is very funny, with some very adept additions to the original text adding some very funny moments to the humour of the central action. All this was helped by some brilliant acting from the cast. Christian Dann as the pub Drunk, John Kelly (who else) as the Guard, Ann Egan as Mrs Fallon, Nuala O’Kane as the deaf Mrs Tarpey, who sets the rumours rolling, Mary O’Hara as Mrs Tully the village busy body, and Benny O’Brien as the chuckling James Ryan can all take particular bows for their hilarious turns.

But in truth not one of the 14 were found wanting, making every character on stage an absolute delight.  Particular credit has to go however to Ken Shedwell’s Bartley "If we had ducks, they’d drown" Fallon. He plays the whimpering, moaning misfortunate who is caught up centrally in the action behind the gossip, from which he can find no escape. His comic turn was priceless, and worth the effort of attending alone. And if the aim of a comedy is to leave em laughing, that’s certainly what Red Haired Mary achieved.

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