The Voyage

THE Famine is at its height and when the last member of 10 year old Aine (Eveanna O'Meara)'s family dies she bravely hops on a famine ship to New York.

Luckily for her she befriends the lugubrious Ratser (Mark O'Brien) and shortly afterwards young Ciaran (Shane Conaty) and his mother Rosy (Helen Roche) or she would have ended up, as Ratser puts it "at the bottom of the briny with the fishes".

On a ship where starvation and fever are rife, Aine and Ciaran still manage to have fun through story telling, dressing up in posh clothes that Aine finds, and even by foiling two crooks out to swindle some money in a land deal.

By taking the history of the Famine out of Ireland and reenacting it on an exciting and visually stimulating ship at sea, Paula Meehan and TEAM theatre company have cleverly breathed life into a period of history which is dead to many primary school children.

The energy and charm with which O'Meara and Connaty bounce around designer Paul McCauley's ingenious timber sailing ship should convince even the most cynical of 10 to 12 year olds to lend a sympathetic ear to Aine's dismal tales of death and destruction.

No such persuasion would be needed for Aine's other tales of Oisin and Tir na nOg and Mananniln Mac Lir that she passes on from her grandfather to Ciaran and which are beautifully re enacted on board the ship.

Meehan is refreshingly unafraid of the grim details of the Famine and nor does she shy away from occasional forays into the kind of slighty saucy language found on a ship which delighted the audience.

There were moments when I feared that the script was about to descend into Peig Sayers-isms of the "there's me all alone in the world and never to see the auld sod again" type, that would strike fear into the heart of any adult - never mind a child.

However, it is usually saved by Meehan's vivid and satisfying descriptions of a "fish skin bag with rippley colours on it like you'd see in the sea" or of the sea surging and glinting like the scales of a giant sea monster.

But enough from me and on to the experts.

My neighbours, Lisa, Ashley and Danielle, aged between nine and 10, were most enthusiastic, with both Lisa and Danielle picking out Ratser's constantly gloomy weather forecasts as the highlight of the play.

Ashley particularly enjoyed it as she has recently come back to Ireland from the States and liked the story of Aine doing it the other way around. All three of them said they weren't bored for a minute.