DUBLIN RUN FOR MAYNARD PERDU
PEOPLE who missed award-winning playwright Billy Roche’s one-man show ‘The Diary of Maynard Perdu’, starring Peter McCamley, when it was staged in Wexford recently, will have a chance to see it in Dublin during a six-night run in Smock Alley Theatre in the first week of September.
Billy and Pete began a week of rehearsals in the National Opera House on Monday in preparation for the the show opening in Smock Alley on Tuesday, September 4, running until Saturday, September 8 at 8pm each night with a preview on Monday, September 3. People can book tickets and transport from Wexford by bus by contacting 083 1073939.
The playwright will feature on the Arena arts show on RTE Radio 1 with Sean Rocks on Thursday, August 30.
The Diary Of Maynard Perdu is set in the fantastic, mirrored, burlesque world of the Spiegeltent where fantasy and delusion reign supreme. Based on a novella by Roche, the one man show takes the audience on a romantic journey of adventure and intrigue which only serves to mask a pain and loss buried deep within.
The comic/tragic, linguistic tour-de-force displays traces of Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare and Nietzsche and has been described as ‘The Elephant Man meets The Catcher In The Rye’.
Wearing the mask of Maynard Perdu, the lead character becomes a dandy, a cad, a poet, a lover, a dream weaver, a showman, a chameleon and a Ring Master Extraordinaire. Behind the gaiety lurks the heartbreaking tale of a poor unfortunate creature who is searching for the precious gift of love and family and the home he faintly recalls.
The author Eoin Colfer described it as ‘ a richly, layered, dark tale that enthralls from the first beautiful sentence to the final poignant paragraph’.