By Rose Rushe
THE muffled response, if any, to Irish soldiers returning home after World War 1 is one strand in a new drama developed on site at The Sailor’s House, O’Curry Street.
A promenade style opening on Tuesday 11 will take us into the life and fractured mind of Jack (Conor Madden), a Limerick man, as he joins his wife Eily (Marie Boylan) and son in this exploration of what it was like for so many, ruined by exposure to war and then shunned, or not, by the village.
We the audience pick up tickets and perhaps a gargle at Willie Sexton’s Bar, Henry Street at either 6pm or 8pm on a date between Tuesday November 11 and Saturday 15. Steps then are taken into Jack’s chaos, reflected in the faded interior of The Sailor’s House on O’Curry Street.
“We are going into his world [On The Wire],” explains artistic director Terry O’Donovan, UK based with Dante or Die. His talent for site-specific atmosphere emerged in Limerick Youth Theatre apprenticeship in the late 1990s.
Funded by City of Culture’s Made in Limerick stream, Marie Boylan’s Wildebeest Theatre Company’s concept is developed by O’Donovan (seen tearing around Savoy Hotel this year with his company’s ‘I Do’) and cast.
O’Donovan makes clear that the actors – Boylan, Mike Finn, Amanda Minihan, Conor Madden and Shane Whisker – are co-devising script, action and intent with him as this hour long work takes form.
“This crumbling Sailor’s House, and Marie always wanted the work to be staged here, I guess it’s a beautiful image for how war affects people, even now”.
Norma Lowney has designed the set. We hear of wallpaper patterned with sandbags; there are keynotes to echo the breakdown of Jack’s relationship with his wife. Art O’Laoire is on sound.
“They are fabulous to work with,” Terry O’Donovan says of crew and cast in the shaky terrain of ‘On The Wire’, “so talented and so dedicated”.
With Boylan and Minihan blessed with golden pipes, and Mike Finn able to hold a note, expect lyric and melody to have further resonance in this emotive, deeply personal scan into WW1 and its connection to the Irish and to the idea of what it is to be Irish.
Book on www.onthewire2014.com
