WEXFOUR IN NYC

Wexfour, a set of four short plays by Wexford writers John Banville, Eoin Colfer, Billy Roche and Colm Toíbín which was commissioned by Wexford Arts Centre as a 40th anniversary celebration, will enjoy a staged reading in New York this week at the first Irish Festival supported by Culture Ireland.

Arts Centre executive director Elizabeth Whyte who is the Wexfour producer, is travelling to New York with Billy Roche and John Banville while director Ben Barnes, currently working in Delaware, will join them there.

The American event follows a successful run in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris earlier this year.

The cast for the staged reading will feature Irish actors based in New York who have extensive Broadway and off-Broadway credits including Billy Carter (Fair City, Holby City, Titanic series); Geraldine Hughes who recently played opposite Mark Rylance in Jerusalem on Broadway and has film credits including Gran torino and Rocky Balboa, and Colin Lane who played opposite Gabriel Byrne in a Touch of the Poet on Broadway.

The performance will be followed by a celebration of Wexford in music and words chaired by the Irish Consulate and Wexford native Barbara Jones. The singer/songwriter Eleanor McEvoy who played live on stage during the original Wexford production is unable to travel to New York and her music has been recorded for the US show.

The US-based Wexford singer Michael Londra will also involved with a few numbers being performed from the upcoming production of Noel, a new musical by Eoin Colfer with composer Liam Bates of Kilmore Quay which is being produced by Londra’s Venuworks company and will run at the National Opera House in Wexford in December. The production will take place in The New York Library for Performing Arts at the Lincoln Centre this Wednesday, September 28 and is already booked out.