The Mother’s Arms is a new musical story from one of Galway’s most famous and certainly most unusual performers, Little John Nee. For this show he is joined by the Highly Strung Orchestra and the combination is electric. After a highly successful run in the Earagail Festival in John’s native Donegal, the show plays for the first time in Galway on Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 January at the Town Hall Theatre.

The show is set in The Mother’s Arms Singing Lounge - the previous proprietor has recently been sent to prison and his daughter Rose has returned from a failed marriage in the Florida swamps to run the place, but the banks are circling like vultures. It’s been a long time since there was any singing here. On a beautiful summers’ morning a vintage automobile struggles up the hill, driven by Taxi Mc Dermott founder member of “The Caledonia Highly Strung Orchestra” and there begins a tale...

The Mother’s Arms is a show littered with wonderful moments. There’s a 70 year old woman who describes the details of her recently acquired tattoos. Then there’s Rose, the pub’s landlady, who managed to escape a Deliverance-like fate in Florida. For one scene, two headlights are raised over our host’s head as he takes on the persona of a boy racer. Welcome to Planet Nee!

The Highly Strung Orchestra features Jeremy Howard, Andrew Galvin and Orlaith Gilcreest. The trio play piano, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, bazoukis , petrol cans and more throughout the performance. And cluck like chickens! Surely “Do the Mhatama Gandhi/and let in the light is a contender for lyric of they ear.