Rehearsals have begun at the Town Hall for a new production of Conal Morrison’s award winning adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s novel, Tarry Flynn, will be presented at the Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday 3rd to Sunday 8th August. The play is a moving evocation of rural Irish life - a time when life and the land went hand in hand but told with the wry observation and acerbic wit of Ireland’s best loved poet.
The production is extraordinarily ambitious in scale and content – it will be the biggest ever stage drama presented in Galway. Since it was originally written as a novel, it is freed from the normal constraints of drama: scenes merge into each other, characters transform themselves into animals and the whole seething tumult of a riotous imagination is on display.
Set in Cavan in the 1930s, it tells the story of Tarry, a farmer poet, and his quest for big fields, young women and the meaning of life. His sensibility is torn between two impulses: the poetic and the preoccupations of all young men! We follow his adventures as he uncovers the beauty in every aspect of nature and farm life, while keeping up his desperate campaign to get a kiss.
In the 1960’s the adaptation of this great work into a play by the Abbey Theatre gave this major Irish novel a whole new dimension and more recently a new adaptation by Conal Morrison incorporating choreography and movement was a huge hit in the 1990’s. Due to the size of the production and the cast, it was not presented outside Dublin. But this August, the Town Hall Theatre will produce Tarry Flynn using Morrison’s adaptation – the first since the celebrated Abbey production.
Directed by Andrew Flynn and designed by Owen MacCarthaigh, everything about the production is larger than life – there is a cast of over sixty, live musicians, choreographed animals – all dedicated to capturing the cadences of Kavanagh’s enduring portrayal of a rural community and the landscape they inhabit. The community cast are drawn from a wide cross section of Galway life including some leading actors from the amateur drama societies, present and former members of Galway Youth Theatre and a range of people new to the world of theatre. The production will feature live music led by Sean Moloney of the famous Galway traditional music family.