An Taibhdhearc’s lewd, bawdy and brilliant Chaucer adaptation hits all the right notes

Review by Bernie Ni Fhlatharta

It was lewd, rude, saucy and bawdy but most of all the latest production staged by An Taibhdhearc was brilliant.

Jingle Bang Jangle provoked much laughter and spontaneous responses from the audience  because this production of Pádhraig Ó Giollagáin’s play, based on The Miller’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is true to the Medieval era.

From the minute the curtain opens, the audience engages with a medieval village as it awakens one morning and the villagers set about their daily duties, including the rather crude practice of peeing in a bucket and then throwing its contents out the window!

It’s a noisy start with the miller grinding his milling stone, the blacksmith banging on his anvil and the shrieks and cooing of those in the stockades, who act as a chorus for the duration.

This production is described as a musical play but thankfully there are only a few songs in it and some very nice musical sounds throughout.

Under Rod Goodall’s direction, it is very much a drama and has all the hallmarks of his previous work here in Galway as well as with Footsbarn Travelling Theatre, of which he was a member when they arrived for Galway Arts Festival back in the 1980s.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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