GALWAY COMPANY Hourglass Theatre grace the Town Hall studio next week with a trilogy of new one act plays by local writer Ian Patterson, under the title Loose Change.
The plays cast an ironic eye on the worlds of education, finance, and family ties. In The Best and Brightest, a cynical tutor discovers the limits of knowledge when challenged by a palm-reading undergraduate; two brothers clash on the best way to care for their ageing mother in Sorted; and a conscientious bank clerk struggles to do the right thing as investors rush to sell their shares in Soft Landing.
“My four previous plays were all full length so I had been wanting to do some short plays,” Patterson tells me. “Loose Change deals with the general theme of declining fortunes. It is set against the backdrop of the economic crash we’ve endured over the past few years. There is a lot in the plays about the theme of money and they also address subjects like the treatment of the elderly and the prevalence of misinformation.
“In The Best and Brightest the focus is on the limits of knowledge in the world of education, and the prevalence of modern superstitions despite what education has to offer, ie, the way people will invest belief in conspiracy theories in favour of factual detail, the web as a source of information instead of more traditional, verifiable, sources, and so on. For instance, one of the strands in it is about the image of Israel and the way opinion is so divided on its actions.”
Hourglass’s most recent play was Leda, Come Home while earlier productions include Zed’s Erroneous Zones, and Red Handed. The three plays which make up Loose Change are inter-connected, with recurrent characters and references that imbue the trilogy with a thematic unity.
As well as authoring the trilogy, Ian also directs the plays and features in the cast. Joining him onstage are Colette Devaney, PJ Moore (author of The Justified Tight Bastard’s Guide to Life ) Sharon Prendeville, and Frieda McGragh
Loose Change runs at the Town Hall studio from Tuesday April 14 to Saturday 18 at 8.30pm nightly. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
