Murphy to take centre stage at Galway Arts Festival

Date Published: 02-Jun-2011

BY JUDY MURPHY

Hollywood star Cillian Murphy is making an eagerly awaited return to the stage at this year’s Galway Arts Festival in a one-man show, written and directed by Enda Walsh.

Misterman is a co-production between the Arts Festival and Dublin’s Landmark Theatre Company and is a complete reworking of a blackly humorous play that Enda Walsh himself performed in 1999, explains Festival Director Paul Fahy.

Cillian Murphy and Enda Walsh previously worked together to great acclaim in Walsh’s groundbreaking Disco Pigs in the mid 1990s and Misterman is the first time that they have joined forces since then.

The play has been in development for the past year and, says Mr Fahy, although it is a one-man show, it is a huge production, with a creative team that includes Dublin-born contemporary composer Donnacha Dennehy who has written a new score for it.

A major new exhibition by one of Ireland’s leading artists Hughie O’Donoghue, two Shakespeare productions from Ed Hall’s Propeller Theatre Company; a new play by UK author Mike Bartlett, supergroups AfroCubism; Blondie and authors Colm Tóibín and Emma Donoghue are just some of the participants in the Galway Arts Festival which runs from July 11 to 24.

The Festival will stage street events from French company Les Phiébulistes and Erth from Australia, while Macnas presents This Fierce Beauty, a night-time parade, starting at 8.45pm on Sunday night, July 17.

The Big Top musical acts have already been announced and include AfroCubism, Blondie, Bell X1 with Duke Special and New Zealand native Liam Finn, and De La Soul and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Other music includes Session Americana, a who’s-who of the Boston roots scene; Irish super group De Danann; Reels, Jigs & Jazz with Brendan Larrissey and Pat Collins; The National Chamber Choir of Ireland; Kaleidoscope; Iarla Ó Lionáird, The Walls, Jack L, and a series of traditional lunchtime gigs in two new Festival venues, Kelly’s Bar and Monroe’s Live, featuring a host of leading Irish musicians including Altan’s Dermot Byrne.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.