by Rose Rushe
‘ANGELA’S Ashes – A Musical’ will open here on Wednesday July 17 to bring Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize winning tale to life on stage.
Expect a big colourful show with its cast of 22 headed up by Frank Snr (Will Jessop) as narrator; Theo Hendrx playing the youthful Frank and Sarah Aryton as an Angela placed in her late 20s. She has four children living, three to bury and a life of abject poverty awaits then in Limerick lanes after the long passage from New York.
But there’s a lot of laughter in McCourt’s book of his “miserable, Irish, Catholic childhood”.
Within the musical’s original score and script, we can expect some of his storytelling brilliance and the good humour characteristic of this family to carry us through.
Talking to the show producer and co-writer, Adam Howell of Uncontained Arts, we hear “The majority of the cast will multi-role as we have a terrific selection of characters.”
A washing line of sheets serves as a projector screen for the sepia toned links between scenes.
The musical references the city detailed in the book “so there’s mention of Windmill Street, Leamy’s School, Souths Bar, Ozanam Hose, the River Shannon and Barrack Hill.”
Familiar territory to many of us, as is the text. Look forward to an Angela whom Sarah perceives to be “a woman before her time. She blasphemes, there’s no mention of her going to mass on Sundays, she’s pictured smoking by the fire…there are moments in the book in which she seems terribly sad.”
Frank, we hear, was already writing in school and one short piece was called ‘Jesus and the Weather’.
“In American he went out to work as a teacher and was known to be a really inspiring one,” Adam states.
Frank’s own story is one of survival and perseverance, family forgiveness, cultivating innate talent and sharing it – as a teacher, writer, a supremely happy (second) husband. And of course, remaining connected to Ireland as a son and great, great talent recognised on the world stage, whatever the controversy.
Book for Lime Tree Theatre from July 17 to 20, 8pm on www.limetreetheatre.ie
