FRIARS’ Gate in Kilmallock is host to an interesting professional theatre production on Friday 16 that is based on some rich history of ours. Spool back in time to March of 1835 when 10,000 people filled the streets of Carlow to see the public hanging of Lucinda Sly and John Dempsey.
It was to be the last such hanging of a woman in the town.
Sly and Dempsey were convicted of the murder of her husband Walter. Lucinda Sly was a Protestant, John a Catholic; she was a landowner, he her labourer; she was 58 years old, he was less than half her age. They were lovers.
From this, playwright John MacKenna has created a theatre work based on this morbid triangle. He writes and directs and ‘Lucinda Sly’ is staged by Mend & Makedo Theatre Company and is for o16 eyes only.
We hear that the play involves the audience from the moment of arrival outside the theatre on hanging day. “This is a powerful and moving story of love, land, lust and murder” and yes, it has drawn strong reviews from provincial press over the past six weeks of touring plus good houses.
On this Arts page writer’s past experience of site-specific works, Friars’ Gate as a labyrinthine space and Kilmallock as a town can really amplify the theatricality of experience as we shuffle around like tricoteuses at the guillotine. At www.friarsgate.ie
