"SO SAD, so sad," says a prostitute in Jim Cartwright's Road. Indeed! The word Bothar should not appear on the right in a broken street sign. A narrator should not be dimly lit. Bricked up walls should not tremble and plug sockets should not be mobile. But sadder still was the work chosen by Club Players to open the second half of the All Ireland Amateur Drama Festival in Athlone. A richly talented cast deserved better. An inner city Milk Wood, Road is not. Perhaps it was the transplanting from Lancashire to Dublin, perhaps it was its episodic awkwardness and character switching; despite some extremely well pointed episodes and a Minister for Health look alike, this was no Road to Utopia.
Although positioning was sometimes flawed, Thurles Drama Group displayed some intelligent directional touches with Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. For example, using the extremely well cast Maggie to draw attention to the emotions of Agnes. There were problems with the Mundy girls' apparent ages but full marks to all for using just enough Donegal accent to preserve clarity.
John McDwyer's performance as Frank and Geraldine Cronnogue as Rita in Carrick on Shannon's Educating Rita shattered my intention not to use restricted space by naming individual players. Seldom has Willy Russell's work been in such competent hands. As if that was not enough, Carrick's director, set and lighting designers formed an outstanding team. Here was a perfectly orchestrated and admirably underscored alteration of emotions and complexes coming from within two very real people.
Initially, Billy Roche's Poor Beast in the Rain received lively treatment from Enniscorthy's solid all round cast. Their bookie shop set was absolutely authentic but, being so, featured seating arrangements that left the centre at its best in Act Two, vhen the undercurrents between characters became more pointed. When the play reached beneath the banter to unearth something deeper, these regular visitors to Athlone displayed true worth.
First produced at the Apollo Theatre, London in 1994, the courtroom drama Rough Justice by Terence Frisby held the attention of the audience when performed by All Ireland Confined Finals winners, Boolavogue Drama Group. A well lit, authentic courtroom set impressed, although an Old Bailey holding cell might not be brightly and newly painted. The over acting, often associated with less experienced groups was apparent, yet in the play's confrontation scenes, Boolavogue's production worked well.
There were three pages of requests for cancellations on the final evening of the Festival, when Corn Mill Theatre, Carrigallen, presented John McDwyer's new play Lovely Leitrim. This was a work about the tug of the land, despite its paltry rewards, and about people who have been more than 20 years in London and still have not emigrated from Ireland. Corn Mill Theatre, Carrigallen, even if their London skyline was more like New York, provided superb entertainment. In a play about their home county ("they have to cut the cow's horns off so they can get through the rocks for grass") the group capitalised, on every scrap of droll cynicism, every bitter disillusionment.
