“Moonshine’ also won the All Ireland Drama Award in Athlone in 1997 when it was done by an Enniscorthy group. That’s when I saw it and was really taken by it,” he admits. “I’ve had ‘Moonshine’ under my belt for Torch for a while. The setting is not specific to any place in Ireland and we have moved it to 2012”.
Michéal O’Dubhgaill (TG4 producer, ‘Tartuffe’) is cast as the central character Jim McKeever, “a funeral director who is no good at the job. He has not had a booking in five years when the Church of Ireland rector (Gerard Liston) gets in touch with him about the impending funeral of his wife, who is ill”.
Six actors get to play out a comedy that combines pathos and aggression with the laughs. The rector’s 23-year-old daughter (Joanne O’Brien) returns home, her secret shared only with McKeever. Meanwhile, the grievous undertaker sets up an am-dram group (grave digger Peter Hayes, handyman Pat Kelly) to stage ‘Mid Summer’s Night Dream’, helpfully creating roles for these lost souls, one of whom, a schoolgirl (Jeanne O’Connor), having a serious crush on him.
Expect scenes in an embalming studio, in the Protestant church and in Shakespeare, all places ripe for comedy.
“There are themes of religious difference, of mental health, family secrets and redemption threading through the story,” says O’Sullivan. “McKeever is an Everyman, an undertaker who can be blasphemous but ultimately is a more religious man than the rector”.
Joanne O’Brien returns to her hometown after a long absence and meets her past with Jim McKeever (Mícheál O Dubhghaill). Belltable until Saturday 10.
