An exhilarating week of drama is programmed for Theatre at the Mill from Monday 16th May to Saturday 21st May nightly at 7.45pm
Following a series of highly competitive festivals which took place throughout Northern Ireland in March, the top six award winning productions from North and South of Ireland have gained the honour of appearing in the 64th Ulster Drama Festival at Theatre at The Mill, Monday 16 – Saturday 21 May sponsored by Arts Council of N.I. and Enkalon Foundation.
The programme offers the amazing opportunity for audiences to see a spectacular range of plays by well-known and highly acclaimed authors from USA, England and Ireland – performed by companies from Dundalk, Ballyshannon, Wexford, Ennis, Dublin and Belfast
Mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey, Councillor Thomas Hogg commented “ I am delighted to welcome the Ulster Drama Festival back to Theatre at The Mill where audiences will be entertained each evening by the crème de la crème of amateur theatre groups.”
Tickets for the festival are priced at £12 & £10 (Concession) Week Festival Ticket £60 or £50 (Concession) available from Box Office: 028 9034 0202 or www.theatreatthemill.com
PROGRAMME
MONDAY 16 MAY
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s dark comedy is nonetheless a ruthless play about small-time, cut-throat Real Estate Agents. Behind the suave exteriors are lies, blackmail, scheming and desperation – all in a day’s work! This is Mamet’s writing at its best, an abrasive attack on American business and a withering depiction of the men whose lives and values are twisted in order to survive. “….a chillingly funny endictment of a world in which you are what you sell.” Guardian
TUESDAY 17 MAY
OLD TIMES by Harold Pinter. Deeley and his wife Kate are visited by Anna, a mysterious friend of Kate’s from long ago. What begins as a trip down memory lane quickly becomes something much more as long-simmering feelings of fear and jealousy begin to fuel the trio’s passions, sparking a seductive battle for power. “Old Times is a joyous, wonderful play that people will talk about as long as we have theatre” New York Times
WEDNESDAY 18 MAY
LOST IN YONKERS by Neil Simon. Set in 1942 over a candy store in Yonkers, New York, teenage boys Jay and Arty find their lives turned upside down when their father, Eddie, moves away for work, leaving them in care of their strong-willed and stern grandmother and their loving and childlike Aunt Bella. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance and with Louie her brother, a small-time hood, his wife Gert who has her own afflictions and this strange new world called Yonkers! “One of Simon’s most impressive and funniest plays” New York Daily News
THURSDAY 19 MAY
THE LOVES OF CASS McGUIRE by Brian Freil. After fifty two years of romping as a saloon waitress in America, Cass goes home to Ireland. But the brother and his family, to whom she turns, really have no need for her, and ship her off to a rest haven for old dreamers. Nothing is as Cass envisioned it. She begins living off past memories like others in the rest home. This bawdy, vital and compassionate play deals with her genteel family’s rejection of her and her lonely struggle to re-discover the home she’s dreamt of all her life and her eventual surrender to the make- believe of Eden House.
FRIDAY 20 MAY
ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS BY Richard Bean Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small-time east end hood, now in Brighton to collect £6000 from his fiancés dad. However, Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at the Cricketer’s Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with Stanley Stubbers who is hiding from the police and waiting to be reunited with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple… or is it? “This is the most hilarious comic evening in the theatre since Noises Off. The Stage
SATURDAY 21 MAY
KINDERTRANSPORT by Diane Samuels. Between 1938 and the outbreak of war, almost 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, were sent by their parents from Germany to Britain. Nine year old Eva ends up in Manchester. When Eva’s parents fail to escape Germany, the child changes her name and begins the process of denial of her roots. It is only when her own daughter discovers some old letters in the attic that Eva is forced to confront the truth about her past. Samuels has written the best play about the pain and passion of mother/daughter relationships. Guardian