Smitten Review: Kilkenny People (Gerry Moran)

The following review was published in Gerry Moran’s column, in the Kilkenny People newspaper on August 27th 2008;

“On the topic of theatre and local talent, the Devious Theatre Company, whose production of Trainspotting in the Watergate Theatre I wrote about recently in this column, are up and at it again. They performed Smitten a two-act play written by a member of the company, John Morton, who also performs in the production. Smitten was staged in the Barn - Barnstorm’s intimate and charming theatre tucked away in what was once the Loreto convent in Church Lane.

Set in Kilkenny, Smitten primarily deals with the ups and downs, ins and outs of three young couples whose lives loosely interlink and who are trying to find their way in what came across as a rather cold, crude, ruthless, drink-sodden society.

“Alcoholism, pregnancy, testicular cancer, career choices, doomed relationships, sock puppets, mystery women,” these according to the programme, are some of the interweaving themes in Smitten. Too many perhaps, but unless you’re a philistine of the first order you’ll be smitten with Smitten. Never a dull moment, it is at times tender and touching, callous and cruel, but always humorous, engaging and entertaining.

And maybe our Arts Festival folk might take a look also at this energetic, exciting and productive theatre company - not least their talented writer John Morton - and offer them a platform for one of their productions for next years festival.

…The Devious Theatre Company…wonderful local talents.”

Talking Smitten On KCLR96FM

Earlier this evening I dropped into the KCLR 96FM studios in Kilkenny for a chat with Martin Bridgeman on the Culture Club (Arts Show) about Smitten, some of the public reaction and some of the company’s own reaction. Over the 6-7 minutes we chat about the show, the hype, getting to the production, what comes next…

You can listen to the clip below. Thanks to KCLR for having us on the radio last Monday and Tuesday and again tonight for a quick follow up. We’re seriously thankful for all their support.

Ken McGuire speaking to Martin Bridgeman about Smitten - 26/08/2008

-Ken

Smitten Night Two: Sold Out All Over Again

So the second night of Smitten has come and gone and once again we had to hang the ‘Sold Out’ signs out front (or at least our lovely makeshift and very Devious sold out signs).

The phone call came my way about 4pm again to indicate we were out of tickets for Thursday night, knowing that the tickets we were keeping at the door were all snapped up as well, another surprise for us in what is turning out to be a week of nice surprises.

In changing the technical team for the night the show went off relatively without a hitch, opening at 8:05pm without a spare seat in the house. In what is both good news and bad news it looks like Saturday is pretty much sold out and Friday (as of yesterday evening) was about 4-5 tickets off a sell out, leaving many people scrambling for tickets to catch the show before it closes at the weekend.

If you are looking for tickets we suggest you contact Rollercoaster Records sooner rather than later, due to the limited number of tickets available per night.

Tonight’s show, the third of the run, opens in The Barn at 8pm. Why not catch up with some of the cast afterwards in Cleere’s on Parliament Street. We’d love to meet up with those attending the show, hear your thoughts and have a wee chat before enjoying an aftershow tipple.

Here’s to two more good nights on the stage…

Smitten Opens To Sold-Out House

 

L-R: Jack O’Leary, Kevin Mooney, Niamh Moroney and Annette O’Shea in ‘Smitten’

Smitten, our fourth production, opened last night in The Barn, Kilkenny, to a sold-out house. Managing to up the capacity of the venue late yesterday we’re now seating for 80 patrons and each of the 80 seats disappeared before the show opened last night.It’s great to get a call from the ticket office (and many thanks to Rollercoaster Records in Kieran Street for handling our sales) in the afternoon to say they’re all out of tickets. With a limited number of tickets available on the door, whatever tickets we had for yesterday’s show vanished before the lights went up.

It’s hard to see we’re back at show week again with Trainspotting still in the minds of some of the cast but yet, six weeks on from the Watergate, we’re right back in the thick of it doing what we enjoy most - putting on new theatre in Kilkenny.

Given that opening night far surpassed the expectations of myself, the rest of the committee, cast and crew, we’re advising people not to delay in getting a ticket for Smitten. We won’t be adding any additional shows to the calendar for the week. While we *might* have a very limited number of tickets available on the door, you can still purchase tickets for tonight, Friday night and Saturday night from Rollercoaster Records on Kieran Street in Kilkenny.

This is the only venue tickets are available from during the day. Tickets, while they last, are priced at €10. We’ve enjoyed our opening night and hope that you’ll enjoy the rest of the week.

Ken
Producer / Playing ‘Niall’

Smitten Tickets On Sale

Tickets have just gone on sale for our latest production, Smitten. They can be bought from the good folks at Rollercoaster Records on Kieran Street and they cost 10EURO. Tickets can be booked on 056 – 7763669.

Smitten will open in just under 3 weeks time and will run for 4 nights from Wednesday August 20^th to Saturday August 23^rd at 8pm nightly. All information and updates on the show can be found on our website, Bebo and Myspace sites.

The show will be performed in The Barn, Church Lane, Kilkenny.

The Barn is a studio space that lies right in the heart of medieval Kilkenny. Located in Church Lane, directly behind St. Canice’s Cathedral, the building was formerly home to the old Loreto Convent. The space was developed by Barnstorm Theatre Company who have used it for performance and rehearsal over the years. It is located directly behind The Good Sheperd Centre building and we’re delighted to be able to bring a Devious crowd into one of the best performance spaces in Kilkenny.

Please click on our Smitten themed map to The Barn above for further orientation!

Smitten rehearses on

And on we go again. After Trainspotting it didn’t take us awfully long to get back into the rehearsal buzz on a new play. It was either the stupidest idea in the world or a real smart move to capitalise on the success of Trainspotting. Either way, we’ll find out when the curtain goes up in 3 weeks time!

It has been a bit of a stressful one so far. Of that there’s no doubt. It’s mainly been centred on finding a female cast to slot into the parts and that’s been damn hard. Where are the actresses in the South East?! We’ve really struggled with this one but thankfully we’ve shored up all the gaps and the boat sails on! Yup, us folks Devious Theatre are suckers for nautical metaphors.

Our press releases went out this week and as Ross already posted, we hit that Credit Union window with a dose of slightly unhinged A game… it wasn’t going to get the better of us again, oh no! So ship Smitten sets sail.

The cast has been great so far and I think they’re really going to give a good accounting of themselves when the play goes up. We’re blessed with them, truly. There’s no bigger pain in the hoop than uninterested actors and having to implement ‘carrot on a stick’ direction but between Trainspotting and Smitten it’s been a joy to work with the crew we’ve had. Acting has always been my first love, after nautical metaphors. However, over the past few months my duties as a director or a writer has put acting in the back seat for me, only popping up as a utility player in times of difficulty (I’m like the Ole Gunner Solsjkaer of Devious Theatre!) but the passion and the commitment of the Devious acting troupe in 2008 has really roused in me those acting flames again. Just seeing how they’ve approached roles and the constant posing of questions, experimenting, discussion, imagination and tenacity they’ve brought to our projects really shows them up for the talented artists they are. I always found artist to be a wanky word for an actor but it does perfectly describe the attitude this lot have had to their work. They make the words sound as natural as sea water lapping against a boat! And just to confirm the lot of them, apart from myself, they are Stephen Colfer, Ross Costigan, Amy Dunne, Ken McGuire, Kevin Mooney, Lynsey Moran, Niamh Moroney, Maria Murray, Suzanne O’Brien, Jack O’Leary, Annette O’Shea and Geoff Warner Clayton.

I’ll be writing about the play itself in greater detail soon but just to give it a bit of context, it is a selection of interlinking stories based around a group of 20 something’s in present day Kilkenny. It’s not something intended to travel or intended to be a piece of well made theatre. I like to call it a theatrical collage, if such a term makes sense. The scenes are random, unconnected and veer wildly between comedy and tragedy. It’s a new piece of work that is designed to pay tribute to Kilkenny. There’s never really been a piece of Kilkenny based theatre before, not that I know of anyway, and with a bit more of a spring in our step we thought it would be good to get some Kilkenny stories up there. It’s not a real interpretation of Kilkenny, it’s very much the romantic one… albeit with lots of rain. Lots of rain. But it’s the romantic Kilkenny that lies in my head, with the stories shot through with a heavy dose of magic realism. While the stories in the play aren’t ‘about’ Kilkenny, the idea is that they’ll evoke the place anyway. It’s a great city and so many stories happen out there so I thought it might be nice to characterize some of these on stage. And I think that with Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Galway, Limerick and even Wexford (thank you Billy Roche) being represented so strongly by their own indigenous theatre companies that the time was right for us to create something that depicted Kilkenny in the theatre. Hopefully it’ll work out. If not, it’s just a play about lost 20 something’s trying to find their bearings in life! So thematically, it’s just like Trainspotting but minus the skag!

Also, much props to our director Colm Sheenan who has bowled us over with his enthusiasm, energy and dedication to the project. He’s been nothing short of phenomenal, even if his attention to detail is Kubrickish in his analysis of chair positioning! He’s been a wonderful captain of our ship this far and despite all the choppy waters we’ve encountered on our journey I’m sure we’ll arrive at Port Barn on August 20^th full of cheer and of course, grog!

John Morton

Writer

Smitten

All Over Bar The Shouting

Well, Trainspotting has come to a close. The aftershow party has rattled a few bodies right to the bone, we’ve been left reeling from some of the feedback heard so far and we’re gradually pieceing together our thoughts on the past week.

Speaking once more as a committee member, actor and having worked as producer on this production, I still find words escaping me as how to explain the events of the past few days.

Taking a bold step to speak on the behalf of the company, we deviants extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who came along to Trainspotting and all who enjoyed the production. Without doubt this has been our biggest challenge to date but reactions and feedback have by far exceeded any remote expectaion we may have had before opening the curtain last Tuesday night.

We’ll be posting reviews, comments from the cast and crew, photographs from the course of the week and opening up a few new areas on the website with an archive of Trainspotting material.

We’re taking a week off for ourselves before breaking into pre-production for our next show, due to open late August. It’s all over bar the shouting, but if any of the cast and crew still have voices after the weekend’s celebrations then it will be a minor miracle.

Once again, thanks to each and every one of you who shared in the Trainspotting experience. I genuinely hope you enjoyed it as much as we did in putting everything together.

We’ll be back later in the week with more.

Ken

Due To Arrive: Rehearsals, Week 8

So we’re nearly there, a week off our arrival in the Watergate Theatre. Fucking hell, it’s been a quick two months.

All the posters have been completed. All 10 of the bastards. A serious amount of props and kudos must go out to our own Paddy Dunne for the serious hard work and graft he’s put into the poster designs for Trainspotting. I’d go out on a limb and say, not only are they wonderfully representative of the characters who populate Irvine Welsh’s work and create a perfect sense of the world they inhabit but they’ve done a great job of not stepping on the toes of the film incarnations. A hell of an achievement all round Paddy, and it was a pleasure to work on them with you.

Months ago, myself, Paddy and Niamh really busted our asses as we entered pre-production on establishing the style of this play, its colour scheme and the general design scheme. Months on from that, we’re happy with how it’s worked out. I think it’s going to be quite a unique interpretation and hopefully in line with what Harry Gibson wanted to achieve with Trainspotting on the stage. Part of our approach was trying to move away from the film but another part of it is trying to establish a truly unique theatrical experience and I’m confident we’re going to achieve that.

Rehearsal wise, we’ve finished all our blocking and now the actors are polishing their performances and generally tightening up their scenes. They’re a great bunch, and I can genuinely say, the best bunch of actors I’ve ever worked with on any production. Ever. Full stop. And that includes any other amateur, college or professional shows. And if I may sound not too professional about it, I can’t wait for the few post show drinks with this lot. When you’re dealing with subject matter as dark and intense as that in Trainspotting, it really helps to be with a bunch of people who can keep things light hearted and they really are a funny bunch of fuckers…. Yup, top cunts all round.

Speaking of which, we should really have brought a swear jar into rehearsals. Everybody has grown sailor’s mouths since production started and it’s a bit scary how desensitized we’ve become to really hardcore swearing. Between our foul mouths and our suitably degenerated costumes we should form quite a scary proposition for people post show each night. And of course, our poor families.

In many ways, I think everything is gonna seem a little tasteless after Trainspotting, it’s been a hell of a ride for all of us at Devious. Much better than Kilkenny to Athy, that’s for sure.

Of course, as Mark Renton advocates, the importance of preparation is key and we’ve been frantically scurrying about trying to get everything in shape. Myself, Paddy, Niamh, Kev and Ken have been trying to make sure that boats haven’t been missed on the program or PR front and it seems to be quite smoothly building word of mouth. All boats have been caught but forget boats from now on, trains all the way!

But hopefully that will show how ingrained this show has become into our waking hours! And I think our living, breathing and walking of Irvine Welsh’s work will show up onstage. But there’s a week to go, lots more needs to be done. We haven’t quite arrived yet but we’re due to…

Tickets for Trainspotting are still booking at The Watergate Theatre, the number is (056) 7761674 and the dates are June 24th – 28th. I hope to see you there.

John Morton

Co-Director

Trainspotting

P.S. As a recommendation, for anyone who hasn’t read it, Irvine Welsh’s PORNO, the sequel to TRAINSPOTTING, is a fantastic read. Myself and Paddy have been knuckling into it the past few weeks and I can’t recommend it highly enough. This is my second read of it and it’s still so fresh and well written. I just hope they make it into a movie… fuck Ewan McGregor.

I’ve Got My Tickets, How About You?

Well, ok, I don’t have tickets for the show. The only reason being is that I’m actually in the show. But we’ve had a few questions recently via email as to how people can book tickets for the show. So in case you’ve missed the notes around the site and in the press that bookings are currently open at The Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny, you can book tickets

• By calling into the Watergate Theatre box office on Parliament Street in Kilkenny
• Over the phone / by credit card by phoning the box office on +353 56 7761674

The Watergate can post tickets out to you until the week of the show, or you can pay for your tickets in advance and collect them at the box office on or before the performance night.

Don’t forget, we’re running from June 24 to June 28, the show starts at 8pm nightly and you should be able to join us for pints across in Cleere’s from about 10pm onwards. You’re buying the first round by the way. After all, we’re just humble, broke actors in this game for the sheer love of it. That and the adrenaline rush of course.

Tommy Says Rehearsals Are Barry, Ken?

So the rehearsal process continues at Devious Towers (our super sexy rehearsal location smack in the middle of Kilkenny). What with the bank holiday weekend upon us, this week has been pretty intensive so far, and continues to be with two more lengthy rehearsals scheduled for tonight (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday).

Speaking from an actors point of view (I’m playing Tommy, don’t you know) I’ve had a reasonable week thus far, knocking out accent kinks wherever possible with the daes and wis, naes and likesays, ye ken?

Proper junkies that we are, we’re also weening ourselves off scripts this week - at least for the scenes that have been blocked, and blocked, and drilled into your head. Next week should see the entire play blocked off, scripts binned, full props at the ready and regular runs of the show set for the following week.

We’ve also got our press hats on this week (what a scoop!) so expect a flurry of activity over the coming week with regional and national press releases, sneak photos from the rehearsal process and more promotional posters than you could shake a stick at. Or a fist. Or a Scottish flag.

I’m sure there’ll be someone along soon to fill you in on how the week continues to go. In the meantime, enjoy your lunch on this fine Wednesday afternoon.

Ken

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