READER, heads up on the Limerick-made world premier at Belltable, ‘The Morning After the Life Before’.
Ongoing to Friday 26, 8pm, before a shift to Friars’ Gate in Kilmallock for Saturday 27, this two-woman play is a beautifully filtered look at the romance between a gay woman, and a hitherto straight woman who fell over her and fell in love with her.
That it’s such a funny ride of a rollercoaster is the real pleasure. LoL (lots of laughs) and LoL (lots of love) – without the twee.
‘The Morning After the Life Before’ charts their story from before they met, to shy love, getting engaged and on to the Constitutional appeal on May 24 of 2015 for which Ireland crossed the rubicon globally. We were the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage, and better still, by public vote.
Ann Blake is the playwright, actor and subject. You may know her from being front woman with The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra and work on numerous plays, comedies and improvisational gigs. Her bolder partner Jenny Hannon is played by Lucia Smyth, plus Smyth’s umpteen other characters – worried parents, Joe Public as Jenny canvasses, sniffy civil registry.
Paul Meade of Gúna Nua produces and directs with tenderness.
There’s a loveliness to this play, a deep revealing heart full of conflict and dither and fear. Theatrical momentum reaches into the rewarding present and thanks to benevolent democracy, a future to anticipate of legal, fiscal, soulful commitment of the highest rank.
Stir up this heavy stuff with original music, sharp shootin’ wit and despairing confessional. Worth lining out for with a grin.
P.S. Applicable to romantics of all persuasions. Please, be persuaded.
