EMOTION AND HUMOUR IN MICHELLE’S ‘SCOURGE’
HER MOVING AND HILARIOUS BOOK WAS A HUGE HIT. NOW MICHELLE DOOLEY MAHON IS TAKING TO THE STAGE FOR NINE NIGHTS
THE PREMIERE of one-woman play The Scourge by Michelle Dooley Mahon, pictured right, opens at Wexford Arts Centre on Friday, March 30, running for nine shows until Saturday, April 7.
The show is based on Michelle’s debut novel Scourged, a memoir dedicated to her late mother Siobhan (née Dooley) whose voice was sadly silenced by Alzheimer’s disease. It takes a nostalgic look back at growing up in Wexford and Michelle’s own personal battles with depression and diabetes, which she has written about with emotion and humour.
Michelle offers moving and hilarious memories of an ordinary smalltown Irish family struggling to cope NEW ROSS STANDARD with their mother’s illness as they visit her in the nursing home where she spent the last years of her life.
The play was commissioned by Wexford Arts Centre with support from the Artlinks scheme run by south east regional county councils in association with the Arts Council, which provided Michelle with a bursary to develop the work.
It is directed by the acclaimed Wexford-born theatre professional Ben Barnes, former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre and currently director of the Theatre Royal in Waterford, who has also directed theatre in the United States and Canada.
Best-selling author Eoin Colfer said: ‘Michelle Dooley Mahon delves deep into the seam of the everyday, mining the ores of tragedy and comedy, shining a single headlamp as she digs, until the unsuspecting reader, laughed and cried out, is forced to go for a lie down’.
The Scourge will run nighly from Friday, March 30, to Sunday, April 1, with an additonal matinee on Sunday at 2 p.m. and nightly from Wednesday, April 4, to Saturday, April 7, with a matinee on Saturday at 2 p.m. A preview show will take place on Thursday, March 29.
The running time is approximately 75 minutes with no interval.
Tickets at €18 and €16 can be booked at the Arts Centre box office: telephone 053 9123764 or visit www.wexfordartscentre.ie.