AFTER ITS sold-out and critically acclaimed run at Bewleys Café Theatre in Dublin, Galway’s Truewest theatre company bring Mary Motorhead by award-winning writer Mark O’Halloran (Garage, Adam and Paul ) to the Town Hall studio.
Using specially commissioned film, sound, and music alongside Mark’s wonderfully poetic script, and a passionate and studied performance from Cora Fenton, Mary Motorhead will captivate and entertain audiences.
Mary ‘Motorhead’ is in prison. She lies on her bed reading, while scenes of the outdoor world as seen from the window of a car are projected onto the wall behind her. She is doing six years for stabbing her husband, Red, in the head with a knife.
History is invention, she tells us, a story made up based on sometimes scant knowledge of the available facts. Each of us has a known history and a secret one. The secret history, she explains, is what really happened – what was going on inside – something that regular history, or reportage can never really know.
So, Mary invites us to hear her secret history, and in hearing it, we might understand why she stabbed her husband.
The play is a sequel to O’Halloran’s The Head of Red O’Brien, which was first staged in 2001 and which Truewest successfully revived last year. Interestingly there is a quartet of plays in the series and Truewest plan to stage the remaining two in 2012 and 2013. John O’Dowd, who is producing Mary Motorhead reveals how this came about.
“When we were doing Head of Red O’Brien we were all intrigued to know more about the character of his wife Mary,” he says. “Then Michael Ford, from Bewleys Theatre, where we had a run of the play, told us the play was one of a series and that there was one all about Mary’s story. He put us in touch with Mark who generously showed us the scripts and said we could do them. So we’re delighted to be able to perform all four of the plays.”
O’Dowd expands on Mary Motorhead: “The script has the same kind of qualities you find in Mark’s other work. As in Adam and Paul and Garage he loos at characters on the fringe of society and he shines a light on them, on all their beauty, ugliness, humour, and humanity and he brings them closer to us. It’s a very compelling drama where the comedy is just as strong an element as the tragedy.”
Adam and Paul, Garage, and The Head of Red O’Brien all featured male protagonists so how has O’Halloran handled creating a female lead in Mary Motorhead?
“The play is a beautiful piece of writing and one of its strongest points is that Mark has written a real woman in Mary,” O’Dowd replies. “There are none of the stereotypes you tend to find where male writers are devising female characters. Mark shows great understanding of Mary’s character and it’s a really good portrayal of a woman.”
The role of Mary Motorhead is taken by Cora Fenton. “Cora is from Kilmallock and we previously worked together on a film, Channel 31,” O’Dowd explains. “When I read Mary Motorhead she immediately came to my mind for the role. She just ‘got’ the character, her performance is incredible.”
While Truewest have enjoyed successful runs in Dublin, O’Dowd is at pains to emphasise they remain a Galway company first and foremost. “We are very much a Galway company, and one that is interested in doing new, contemporary, Irish plays,” he says. “Having done Mary Motorhead already in Dublin it feels like a real homecoming for us now to be bringing it to the Town Hall. It’s a pleasure to be doing the show for a Galway audience.”
Mary Motorhead is at the Town Hall studio from Monday October 10 to Saturday 15 at 8.30pm nightly. Tickets are €14/12 from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
