Plays bring curtain down on arts event

THE CLOSING weekend of the Kilkenny Arts Festival got off to an early start yesterday morning with the premiere of Holy Mary,a new play by children's writer Eoin Colfer at the Watergate Theatre.

Performed by Aileen Mythen and Iseult Golden, the play follows the plight of Mary Leary as she battles against local bully Majella and prepares for her Holy Communion. Many of the enraptured young audience had just celebrated their communion this year, among them eight-year-olds Cáit Whelan, Sinéad O’Halloran and Lorcan O’Brien, who especially loved Majella’s naughty rhymes.

As the persecuted Mary herself admits, “a rhyme is better than a tease because you can say it a million times and it’s still funny”.

Colfer’s tenderly moralistic play is just one of the theatrical highlights that will bring this year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival to a close.

The premiere of Title and Deed, an intriguing new play by prestigious American playwright Will Eno written for Gare St Lazare Players actor Conor Lovett, and the debut of a new documentary work about transgender identity by theatre-maker Una McKevitt, feature in the weekend programme.

In the ongoing literature strand, Fransisco Goldman will read from his new book Say Her Nameat the Parade Tower this afternoon. A harrowing, intimate blend of truth and fiction, Say Her Namecharts the aftermath of life without his young wife Aura, who died in a swimming accident in 2007.

There will also be readings by poets Paul Muldoon and Michael Longley, and short story writers Claire Keegan and Janice Galloway.

For Ann Meade and Margaret Riordan, who travelled from outside the city to see Holy Mary with their children, last weekend’s torrential rain put a dampener on their plans to see many of the festival’s free street events. However, the glass-blowing demonstrations at Jerpoint Glass Studio proved a dramatic indoor hit, just as exciting as clowns and circus acts, according to parents and children.

The demonstrations are running until Sunday, and although heavy rain is again predicted for this weekend, the rest of the visual arts programme can be enjoyed in between the showers by following the purple-dotted walking trail around the city.