Players present a lover

BALLYCOGLEY PLAYERS will present their fringe festival programme under the title Mayhem and Merriment in St Michael’s Hall on Green Street from Thursday, October 27 to Sunday, October 30, at 8pm nightly.

The programme includes two one-act plays, The Romantic Lover and The Chief Problem. There will also be a short piece with some of the group’s younger members and a surprise element involving older members who are busy rehearsing for a forthcoming full length production of Lay Me Down Softly by Billy Roche.

The Romantic Lover by the late J. Bernard McCarthy, a Cork postman, is set in rural Ireland of the 1950s and introduces the audience to farmer Paud Mullane, who dreams of love, romance and damsels in distress, to the great annoyance of his sister Molly, who harbours her own dreams.

As the local girls are too ‘ matter of fact’ and ordinary for Paud he tries his hand at the 1950s version of ‘ on-line dating’, with hilarious results.

The Chief Problem by Joan Lambert of Ballindaggin began life as a variety show sketch and centres on the McNultys and Tobins, who have been ‘ black out’ for generations, but in true Romeo and Juliet fashion Ned McNulty has married Molly Tobin and her dad Mogue hasn’t taken kindly to the match.

The younger daughter Bridget is returning from the US with a man in tow and Mogue swears that if he turns out to be ‘ the right kind’ he could leave the farm to Bridget and her ‘new friend’. To add to Ned’s troubles the brown cow is down, and the vet is taking his time arriving.

Admission is €10 and tickets will be available at the door.