‘Frank Pig Says Hello’ to Kerry this month
25 years on from its first national tour, previews the return of Frank McCabe’s which will be performed in Listowel this Thursday, November 1 and in Tralee on Thursday November 8.
TWENTY-FIVE years on from its very first national tour, Kerry audiences will once again have the chance watch Pat McCabe’s brilliant stage production of ‘Frank Pig Says Hello’.
The play tells the desperately funny and tragic story of the life of Francie Brady growing up in a small Irish town in the 1960s and his descent towards a brutal act that shocks his community.
Featuring a mesmerising performance by two actors, Darragh Byrne and John Ruddy, Frank Pig is regarded as the most vivid, hilarious and heartbreaking evocation ever seen on a stage of an Irish childhood gone wrong. From the opening live trumpet notes over an image of a happy boy acting the piglet, to the breathtaking depiction of a dreadful murder, the play has been described as theatre at its most entertaining and gripping best.
Pat McCabe and Joe O’Byrne who collaborated on the original ‘Frank Pig Says Hello’ production for the 1992 Dublin Theatre Festival where it won Best Production, before embarking on a world tour that began in Clones, Co. Monaghan and concluded in New York.
Since then the two have produced together Loco County Lonesome, The Dead School, and The Revenant. Set design is by leading Irish artist Robert Ballagh.
Since its first run all those years ago, the play has remained one of the darlings of Irish theatre and it was recently recreated for the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival where it won high praise for exceptional young actor Darragh Byrne and the multi-talented actor, trumpet player and cartoonist John Ruddy, known for his Youtube video animations which have had millions of hits worldwide.
This is a new touring production that brilliantly captures the legendary original and brings one of the great classics of modern Irish theatre to a new generation of audiences.
The play will be performed in St John’s Theatre in Listowel this Thursday November 1 and will make its first to Siamsa Tíre a week later on Thursday November 8.