by Rose Rushe
Picture: Alan Place
PRODUCER, actress, director Joan Sheehy is good at getting people to follow her work around like needy souls. There’s usually a corpse in the offing and a noose for some; perhaps therein lies her magnetism. For ‘Buck Jones and the Body Snatchers’, we wound through Pery Square’s coach house, big house and gardens. Compelled by ‘The Colleen Bawn Trials’, we shunted from grassy knoll by waters to Shannon Boathouse’s upstairs, downstairs’ chambers.
Now for ‘Whitby’, Sheehy’s interpretation of “a section we don’t often see of Bram Stoker’s novel ‘Dracula’”. The HUB at Redcross Hall is the physical venue; the passage itself is the morbid boat trip from Transylvania. Whitby at York, England is where the ship docks, its captain a pitiful sight.
“I like looking at well known stories from other angles and for ‘Whitby’, I looked at a story as well known as ‘Dracula’ but from a part not so much”. The strange goings-on and shifts on board – “one by one the crew all disappear, eventually only the captain and Dracula are left” – lit this Limerick woman’s imagination.
“When the ship eventually wrecks, the captain is there at the wheel but as skeleton. A hound is seen escaping from the boat”.
Dracula proves fatal cargo and the ship becomes coffin for all souls. On English soil, “a young girl Lucy is behaving strangely, going out at night, sleeping in a graveyard. She is under Dracula’s spell but not knowingly”.
Sheehy has gathered a specific cast for this work-in-progress: dancer Colin Dunne is the Vampire and from her ‘Colleen Bawn’ she brings forward Malcolm Adam [magnificent as Dan O’Connell] and Limerick Youth Theatre’s Courtney McKeon.
‘Whitby’ should prove a strong opener for PULSE 11’s theatre legacy hopes. Shiver yer timbers this Friday November 7, 8pm at 39 Cecil Street. Book on 087-6047262.
Note on PULSE 11
(See our Photo booth further down www.limerickpost.ie home page)
LAUNCHED formally in Culture House, PULSE 11 is the second phase of City of Culture’s Theatre Legacy Programme. Four new works, each of circa 30minutes, will be presented on Friday or Saturday nights weekly at HUB, venue for which is Red Cross Hall on 36 Cecil Street.
According to project co-ordinator Monica Spencer, “PULSE has opened up to artists from dance, literature and music – as well as from the more traditional text base that is the springwell for most staged theatrical work in Ireland”. Cross-connecting across multiple art forms is educator and driver in this (‘Whitby’ with Colin Dunne donning mantle of actor for his performance; more interdisciplinary work in the pipes for various artists).
On November 21, ‘Limbo’ will be directed by Maeve Stone; on November 29, ‘Everything, Sometimes’ is an inter-disciplinary dance collaboration led by Kevin Kiely Jnr.
Finally on Saturday December 6, ‘They Weyward Sisters’ will be directed by Donal Gallagher.
