GETTING funding from Limerick Arts Encounter boosted resources for Bottom Dog Theatre Company’s next production. Tom McIntyre’s ‘What Happened Bridgie Cleary’ will run at the unexpected venue of Victoria Snooker Club, Hartstonge Street from Tuesday October 8 to Saturday 19; note the 7.30pm curtain.
With a commitment like this in mind, this local professional company is going all out. Already it has been a vibrant season to date for Limerick based Bottom Dog, rightly thrilled with its ‘Four Plays, Four Places’ having excited those who attached to the series in its site-specific platforms.
For ‘Bridgie Cleary’, expect a soundscape commissioned by director John A Murphy from Stephen Ryan of the band Windings; ensemble members Pius McGrath, Joanne Ryan (‘Ros na Rún) and company co-founder Myles Breen are cast; Liam O’Brien produces with the Bottom Dog team.
“This play has been done only once before and that was by Abbey Theatre in 2005. It toured but not to Limerick and this will be its premier here. Bottom Dog’s focus is that if we are not staging a new play, we choose one from the canon not seen here before”.
Keeping casting local and creating work for the famished pool of experienced talent available is another principle, “contributing back to the economy”.
Bridgie Cleary? “It has something to say about society still and how women are treated, even today”.
A first time director for the Company, it was John Murphy who brought this McIntyre to their attention. He makes the point that the storyline (woman burned to death by husband on suspicion of witchery) “is very much in the lore and this play is very much Tom McIntyre’s poetic take on it”.
Murphy observes that play is based on a true story but true to McIntyre, “is not set in real time, there’s no locale nor time frame referenced. The playwright has built his own construct, the work is his creation. Bridgie Cleary was flamboyantly outgoing, not of the peasant stock around her. Two male characters come into her life with whom she has relations, one being the husband who burnt her brutally, the other – we don’t know if he was a lover or what”.
He describes Tom McIntyre’s language as poetic and difficult, fuelling the dynamic “lyrically, emotionally, ferociously as it it looks at how and what happened”.
Booking for ‘What Happened Bridgie Cleary’ is through Lime Tree box office and at 69 O’Connell Street, Limerick. Hours 12-5.30pm and 061-774774.
