Billy RocheÕs 'Lay Me Down Softly' at Town Hall Theatre
Date Published: {J}
The latest play by one of Ireland’s greatest contemporary playwrights, Billy Roche will be at the city’s Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday next, June14-18.
Set in rural Ireland in 1962, Lay Me Down Softly takes the audience into the burlesque world of Delaney’s Travelling Roadshow and its Boxing Booth. The play is based in a world Roche knows well as his grandfather, Jem Roche, was the first Irish boxer to fight a World Heavyweight title bout back in 1908.
Roche invites his audience to step inside the carnival and to experience, close up, the comings and goings of this wayward troupe as this powerful myth unfolds. The staging around the boxing ring allows the audience to become part of this dark and dangerous and colourful story, a mythic tale of love and loss and pain.
Like all Roche plays Lay Me Down Softly captures the bizarre characters of small town Irish life.
The colourful characters include Theo, the charismatic, violent ringmaster and his Carmen-like lover, Lily. Peadar is Theo’s old tried and not-so-trusted sidekick, and Dean is a vain and bragging prize fighter. There is also gentle, handsome, limping Junior and Emer, a wounded waif of a girl who has come in search of her long lost, runaway father.
The action centres on prize fighter Dean who takes on all comers on a nightly basis – until a challenge from a professional fighter upsets the apple-cart.
Lay Me Down Softly was first seen in the Abbey Peacock Theatre in 2008. This brand new production of the stage play had a sell out successful run at the Wexford Art Centre and at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin earlier this year.
The play is also directed by Billy Roche and sees the playwright reunited with Wexford actor Gary Lydon, who has performed in Roche’s major stage productions; The Wexford Trilogy and The Cavalcaders.
The cast also includes Pagan McGrath, Simone Kirby, Lesley McGuire, Anthony Morris, Dermot Murphy and Michael O’Hagan. Booking is now open at the Theatre on 091-569777 or on the web at www.tht.ie