GEORGE BERNARD Shaw will be celebrated, examined, and performed at NUI Galway - with a production of his play The Millionairess, and a public discussion on his life and work, involving Fintan O'Toole.
Shaw’s 1936 fast paced, absurd comedy, The Millionairess, centres on Epifania. While she is the richest woman in England, her life is falling apart. Her rotten husband is trying to divorce her for his mistress; while Epifania's fancy man is trying to marry her. The only thing she is really good at is making money, but money does not heal a lonely heart. Will she find a man who can pass her test? Will he want to?
The play runs at The O’Donoghue Theatre, NUI Galway, at 8pm, from Wednesday November 7 to Saturday 11. The cast is Lucy Pollock, Stephen Burke, Rebecca Spelman Barry McNamara, Sean Gandolfini, Narain Viswanathan, Patrick O'Malley, Patrice Mc Conway, and Sabrina Kelleher. The director is Aisling Smith. Tickets are €12/7 via the socsbox, NUIG campus, and at the door.
On Tuesday November 7 at 6.30pm, NUIG, in conjunction with the Royal Irish Academy, hosts a discussion entitled Bernard Shaw and the Uses of Celebrity in the James Hardiman Library, featuring Fintan O’Toole, Prof Patrick Lonergan (NUIG ), Ruth Hegarty (RIA ), and Barry Houlihan (James Hardiman Library ). Indeed Fintan O'Toole has gone as far as to call Shaw, "the most famous Irish person who has ever lived". He said: "There is no other Irish person that had the global reach that Shaw had. He is a vast terrain. It is a pleasure to see the book translated into an entirely different medium in the exhibition and one of the things that you see in it is that as well as being a great thinker, a great political activist, great dramatist, as well as that he was one of the world’s great posers.”
Admission is free but places are limited. To register see www.conference.ie
