Colin Murphy is coming to Westport
Westport Chamber of Commerce, in conjunction with The Castlecourt Hotel has announced that it will be hosting a comedy night in The Dome Suite on Thursday June 30. Headlined by comedian Colin Murphy, and supported by Colm O’Regan, it promises to be a great night of stand-up comedy from two of Ireland’s foremost experts in making audiences laugh. Tickets for the gig are available from The Chamber of Commerce office on The Fairgreen and The Asgard at Westport Quay at present but will soon be available at other locations around Westport. They are priced €15 each and are limited so get in early to avoid disappointment. The show starts at 9pm.
Sunday Morning Coming Down at the Linenhall
Truman Town Theatre presents the poignant, dark new comedy Sunday Morning Coming Down at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar on Wednesday June 15 at 8pm.
Written by Mick Donnellan, Sunday Morning Coming Down is a rural play set in the playwright’s home town of Ballinrobe. It centres around the McGuire family and their often comic attempts to perform as a functional family in a house dominated by alcohol, religion and social pressures: the two brothers, teacher John and slaughterhouse worker Chris; father and gravedigger Joe, in a rocky marriage with Theresa. And then ex-girlfriend Sharon arrives on the scene to throw John’s future plans into turmoil. Presenting us with razor sharp wit and a tight character-driven story, Mick describes the play as “a rollercoaster of comedy, tragedy, and the hilarity often associated with the darker side of a small Irish town”. Sunday Morning Coming Down was staged as a sell-out public reading by Druid Theatre company in 2009.
Spine-tingling one-man show
Stephen Doyle will send shivers down your spine when he brings his one man show, The Tell-Tale Heart to Ballina Arts Centre on Thursday June 16 at 8pm.
The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843. It follows an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after murdering an old man.
The murder is carefully calculated and the murderer conceals the body by dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator’s guilt manifests itself in the hallucination that his victim’s heart is still beating under the floorboards.
The Tell-Tale Heart is widely considered to be a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and one of Poe’s most famous short stories. Stephen Doyle is an acclaimed actor whose work ranges from physical theatre to the classics. He has toured extensively with his one-man shows Shakespeare Undressed and A Christmas Carol. In his adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart Doyle creates a world of delicious insanity that is in turns funny and hauntingly disturbing.
Admission is €10 to €12 and booking is advised.
Taking the Boat talk at the Museum of Country Life
On Sunday June 19, join author Brendan McGowan to hear about the post-war exodus from rural Ireland to Britain and how it has resonance today. The talk is called Taking the Boat — Irish Emigration to Leeds and takes place from 2.30pm to 3.30pm and booking is required.
Kubrick programme continues
The Ballina Film Club presents… Stanley Kubrick programme continues this week with Eyes Wide Shut. A doctor becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter after his wife admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met and chastises him for dishonesty in not admitting to his own fantasies. This sets him off into unfulfilled encounters with a dead patient's daughter and a call girl. But when he visits a night-club, where a pianist friend is playing, he learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their congregations. However, he quickly learns he is in well over his head and finds he and his family are threatened. The screening will take place on Thursday June 14 at 8pm, admission costs €5.
