SET in Stone, the drama that brings 500 years of Kilmallock history to life at a gallop, returns to Friar’s Gate. Callback Theatre Company pack in 18 performances between August 1 and 14, counting four matinees at the weekends in this play written and directed by John Sheehy.
According to co-producer, Caoimhe Reidy of Friar’s Gate, “Set in Stone is a promenade style piece of theatre inviting the audience to literally follow the action from scene to scene. The audience congregates at Kilmallock’s beautiful Dominican Abbey before being led to Friars’ Gate Theatre. Here they are taken on a journey through time experiencing the theatre and inhabiting the story in a new and exhilarating way”.
You get the sense that these locations are specific and integral to vivid storytelling. Leading us from the stony grey sanctum of the Abbey, through the graveyard and past Kilmallock keep primes the mind for every eventuality. Comments and scenarios and costumed characters pop up at parapets.
Throughout the evening you will be “invited for a drink in 1867 with the locals trapped inside the Freemasons Arms Hotel as the Fenian attack on the town’s police barracks rages outside, encounter one of the most notorious female figures of the 19th century in the form of Castle Oliver’s Lola Montez, behold the art of faction fighting, be a spectator at Ireland’s Klondyke in the 1924 Bulgaden Gold Rush and witness the last moments of a young Kilmallock man, sentenced to hang for the murder of a local landlord”.
For the audience, to be well dressed is to be suitably dressed so give up your ould sins of high heels and glad rags. A coat for the night and comfortable footwear will liberate the mind to follow Kilmallock through the hills and valleys of times past.
40 places only per night, tickets are €20. Book for 8pm evening show at Friar’s Gate from August 1 to 14 or 2.30pm matinee each Saturday and Sunday inclusive.
