Archive News
Tea, tragedy and black comedy in explosive drama Moments
Date Published: {J}
Deirdre Kinahan’s explosive drama, Moment, which explores how one awful moment can change a family’s life forever, will visit the Town Hall Theatre from April 26-30 as part of an Irish tour following its sell-out run at London’s Bush theatre, when it was widely praised by critics and audiences alike.
Moment’s cast includes Spiddal actress Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, who appeared in this gripping play when it was first staged 16 months’ ago at Navan’s Solstice Arts Centre followed by a short run in Dublin’s Project.
The response to its initial run in Ireland was muted and matters might have ended there, except that UK producers who saw it in Dublin – thanks to the support of arts group, Culture Ireland – brought it to the Bush.
Moment got a phenomenal reception in London, with a series of four star reviews in the national press and unanimous praise for its eight actors.
The Guardian’s critic Michael Billington praised “Kinahan’s ability to show how the present is contaminated by the past”, while Charles Spencer in The Telegraph said the “play comes over like a shattering Greek tragedy, served up with cups of tea and slices of quiche”.
The story of Moment begins on a seemingly ordinary evening when an Irish family sit down to tea. But it shortly becomes clear that this is no normal evening.
The son of the house, Nial (Ronan Leahy) who committed a terrible crime many years earlier, has come home to visit. Nial has some news to share and a conscience to clear. But while he has rebuilt his life, following counselling and rehabilitation in prison, his mother and sisters have not been so fortunate and still bear the scars of his crime 15 years on.
Deirdre Kinahan was inspired to write Moment in the wake of several high profile Irish manslaughter cases, most notably the killing of Robert Holohan by Wayne O’Donoghue in Cork in 2005 and Patrick O’Dwyer, who killed his sister Marguerite in Clare in 2004.
Kate and Maeve Fitzgerald play Nial’s two sisters, Ciara and Niamh, both of whom have reacted differently to their brother’s actions.
Kate plays Ciara, the “calmer, settled one”, who was eight when Nial killed someone. That someone was a friend of their sister, Niamh and, for obvious reasons, the killing had a more visible impact on her,
Both Niamh and Ciara went into survival mode after the tragic event, while their mother fell apart. Ciara ended up looking after both her mother and older sister and grew up overnight, becoming an over achiever, getting away, and marrying at a young age. The play shows how people have different coping mechanisms, observes Kate.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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