NEXT WEEK in the Town Hall sees the welcome return of Mick Donnellan’s Gun Metal Grey from the tireless Truman Town Theatre.
First staged at last year’s Galway Theatre Festival and now considerably revised for this new production, Gun Metal Grey is the best production yet from writer Donnellan and Truman.
The play is set in Quinn’s Funeral Home and has all the ingredients that rapidly brought critical acclaim to the company with their previous shows – Sunday Morning Coming Down and Shortcut To Hallelujah.
Seamus Quinn is an eccentric undertaker to say the least. Often without a hearse that works or a coffin that’s new, Quinn relies on the help of unreliable grave diggers and alcoholic customers to help him get through the funerals.
Meanwhile, local teenager Jess O’Malley has been forced by her parents to marry geriatric Paddy Farragher in the hope he might die soon and that she will inherit his land. Then, a mysterious death in the town brings everyone together for a funeral that can amount to nothing but chaos.
Often described as a mix between John B Keane and Martin McDonagh, Donnellan’s writing has brought audiences to their feet all over the country. In Gun Metal Grey, he exposes the dark truths of small town life through humour that is peppered with a serious undertone. As Irish Theatre Magazine noted: “It is sharp, but not bitter…its anarchic desperation is perversely colourful.”
The cast features Eddie Mullarkey, Michelle Henson, PJ Moore, Kate McCarthy, and Cathal Leonard. Direction is by author Mick Donnellan. It runs at the Town Hall Studio from Monday October 22 to Saturday 27 at 8.30pm nightly.
Tickets are €12/10 and are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
