AT Lime Tree Theatre next Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 at 8pm, ‘Luck Just Kissed You Hello’ is introduced as a family drama combined with a mystery.
Created by its principal actor Amy Conroy for Hot for Theatre, ‘Luck’ was co-produced by Galway International Art Festival. It plays close attention to gender themes, identities and conflicts.
The dynamic to this troubled family and its various truths is “a vivid violent memory that all three characters experienced from different perspectives”. They gather at the hospital bedside of their dying father, Big Ted Donovan.
Big Ted was a larger than life presence in their lives, but now he is a dying man and decisions have to be made. A eulogy is required but there is more than one perception of this man, and as this play makes clear, of any man.
Mark (Amy Conroy) is now male, but growing up he was Laura, a “girlish boy” who never fitted into the small town or her father’s view of who she was expected to be. Mark has been away a long time and he is back with reluctance and great emotion to sit by his dying father and deal with a life left behind, blacked out.
Alongside Mark we meet his twin brother Gary (Will O’Connell), a gay businessman. He didn’t live up to Big Ted’s ideals either, but has built a successful business and an international life as far away as possible. He too resents the fierce upbringing that Big Ted gave them as children after their mother died giving birth.
The third character is Sullivan, their childhood friend taken in by their father and the one who stayed at home.
He has looked after the old man and in turn their father has looked after him. Sullivan’s memories are good memories – he went on to marry a a local girl and together they looked after Ted like family.
Book on website www.limetreetheatre.ie
