PAYDAY Productions created Lunchtime Theatre at the Savoy Hotel more than a year ago and has since introduced Teatime Theatre in response to demand. Payday has now begun to run an 8pm performance on the last Friday and Saturday of each month, a show other than its Lunch and Teatime slots. This creates a double bill for followers of this production company (Meave McGrath, Colm O’Brien and Pius McGrath) and its expanding programme at the Savoy.
Lunchtime Theatre this Thursday July 25 and Friday 25 at 1pm and Teatime Theatre on Thursday 25 at 6pm, is Alan Bennett’s ‘A Chip in the Sugar’. Bottom Dog’s Myles Breen pioneered this one-man show at June’s TomCat Festival that vitiated the city for June bank holiday. Frances Healy directs.
“It’s incredibly funny but none the less, deadly serious,” Breen says, “one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Head series. “Frances and I made the decision to make the characters Irish people, living in Britain”. The co-dependent mother and son “live in a world where everything is safe and anything new is threatening. It is Bennett’s sense of humour, the way it is written, his sense of detail and the way he puts things.”
Breen’s role is the narrator, an middle-aged son who is miffed when old love of his mother’s comes calling; the actor gives him a precious sweetness and depth. There are intimations of a damaged character, of one whose psychological health is suspect.
On to ‘TAN’, a farce written and devised by Wildebeest Company’s Ann Blake and Marie Boylan. Essentially, it telescopes the 1-3 hours required by young Limerick women to groom themselves before a night getting blasted on the tiles. And yes, the able Myles Breen directs this one.
‘TAN’ is just back from a run at Theatre Upstairs for the 10 Days in Dublin festival where its slick and funny parody went down a treat.
“We staged it first in February 2012 and again in June in Loft Venue [overhead Locke Bar],” Blake tells Arts page. “We brought it to Listowel and to Galway and while it is a scripted show we have updated it according to which rugby player has retired and so on. Now that we’ve done it before a few different audiences we can ask, does this element work? Is that as funny as we thought? and make the change”.
‘TAN’ is a concept by Marie Boylan, self confessed insider on the club scene, that she and Blake evolved into a sort of ‘before and after’ scenario for the audience who witness the two girls getting ready for the night from the get-go – fake tan, bad hair manoeuvres, necking vodka, sniping at their rivals, howling for a cab in high heels.
“The show is a comedy,” the writer/ director/ actress/ singer that Blake is makes clear. “It is fun, not a statement”.
Enjoy its avid pace and truth with a Savoy Hotel cocktail created for this venue. As with ‘A Chip in the Sugar’ book on lunchtimetheatre@gmail.com or show up. ‘TAN’ runs Friday 26 and Saturday 27, 8pm.
