READERS, be warned: the comedy ’51 Shades of Maggie’ is described by its lead (and only) actress Emma Barry “as really, a very explicit show with vulgarity” but there is a saving grace in that “the humour takes out the vulgarity”.
We will have to fasten our seatbelts in University Concert Hall for a bumpy ride (chortle) when Maggie bowls into town on Wednesday 13, Thursday 14 at 8pm.
Apparently there are no props, which will disappoint some but “there is a big set and a huge bed that spins around and takes you to various places”.
Like so.
“Maggie Muff is a Northsider, a working glass girl who thinks she knows what she wants from a man but who has been let down a few times. She then meets her Mr Big whom she feels is the man of her dreams, or is she going to be put off by his private room of pain?”
That is the question that we the audience will struggle to answer during Emma Barry’s two hour show, although she warns that a room of 900 in Drogheda the other night laughed so hard that ’51 Shades of Maggie’ over ran by 20 minutes.
We never glimpse Mr Big, the Southsider whose first date with her is in the upmarket Café de Seine but we’re on ‘the journey’.
Barry herself did a diploma in theatre and performing arts in Coolock, completed her degree in University of Hertfordshire and returned to her alma mater Coláiste Dhúlaigh in Dublin. She had been teaching since 2009 and doing shows when the call came through from GBL Productions and RC Kelly Productions to audition.
“This show originated as ’50 Shades of Red, White and Blue’ when the playwright Leesa Harker in Belfast first read some of ’50 Shades of Grey’. That inspired Harker’s spoof blog and ultimately, this one-woman comedy that is being adapted per country with local inventiveness.
At UCH, November 13 and 14, 8pm.
