Newry and Mourne District Council

18th February 2010

It’s a dramatic feast of offerings during March this year, with both the Town Hall and the Arts Centre playing host to the best of Northern Ireland’s theatre companies. Add to the mix the Ballet and Theatre Dance elements of Newry Feis, a production by Ann Cunningham’s Dance Academy, finishing off the month with Newry Drama Festival, and there won’t be any excuse for lounging at home on the sofa! This coming month sees a packed programme of amateur and professional, performance and competition which promises to entertain and transport the audience.

The month kicks off with Centre Stage’s production of Sam Hanna Bell’s ‘That Woman at Rathard’ at the Town Hall on Monday, March 1st. December Bride, the book by Hanna Bell which was in turn adapted for film, is here faithfully reproduced with all the brooding suspicion and small-town animosities which made the film a success. The story revolves around a plot focusing on a farm, two brothers, an illegitimate child and…that woman.

Hot on the heels of Centre Stage we bring you C21 Theatre Company’s production of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Three Women’. Written in verse, this is a sensitive and reflective portrayal of the realities of pregnancy. A three-hander, the piece steers clear of the clinical details of birth, instead reflecting on the women’s states of mind. Reviewers have praised Plath’s “joyful and tragic” work, describing it as resonating “soul-deep, regardless of one’s experiences or one’s sex”. Tuesday March 2nd at the Arts Centre.


On Friday, March 5th, Bruiser Theatre Company’s 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' is one of Brecht's best known plays. It is an alarming and savagely hilarious allegory of Hitler's rise to power, in which the Fuhrer is portrayed as charismatic Chicago gangster Arturo Ui, endeavouring to seize the city's fruit and vegetable racket from top-dog Al Capone. He systematically seduces the public and eliminates his political rivals in his bid for total domination. This is Political theatre at its best and most powerful.

Six actor/musicians will play over fifty characters to bring this powerful story to life in the true Bruiser physical style. Unnerving and scathing; the battle for political status and the corruption of power still fill our newspapers in 2010. When credits crunch, to whom do we turn? Arturo Ui offers protection and freedom - at a very large price.



Last Autumn brought The Lyric’s production of the award-winning ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane” to Newry, and they’re back, this time with Owen McCafferty’s new play, ‘The Absence of Women’. Already being described by reviewers as a “perfectly formed mini- masterpiece”, this features Ian McIlhinney and Karl Johnson (also known for playing Twister in BBC’s Lark Rise to Candleford series). McCafferty is famed for his authentic portrayal of Belfast lives and of the place held by alcohol in those lives. Instantly recognisable are Iggy and Gerry, last of a generation of what would have been called ‘navvies’; the men who built the underground, the motorways, the housing estates. Never saving a penny, rarely going home, and having lost touch with the old country, their lives are tinged with regret, blunted by drunkenness and painfully lonely. Selling out at theatres across the North, the Arts Centre is almost the perfect venue for such an intimate production. Book early to avoid disappointment. Thursday 11th March at the Arts Centre.

Call 028 30313180 for further details. All shows at 8pm unless otherwise stated. Feis, Dance Academy and Drama Festival programme times vary: check with box office.