by Rose Rushe
MODELLED on her New York Times bestselling book, ‘The God Box’ is an extraordinary success as one woman’s story on stage. Writer and performer Mary Lou Quinlan, an American entrepreneur with nil professional theatre background, makes Limerick one of her two stops in Ireland when she arrives at Lime Tree Theatre on Saturday June 20.
Essentially, the God Box is the suite of boxes she found shortly after her loved mother Mary passed away, nine years to the day of her interview with Limerick Post. They were full of petitions to the saints and rifling through their sweetness and specificity, Mary Lou found the connection for which she hungered. “It’s a true story,” she says over the phone from NY. “When [the death] happened it was such an emotional blow, as it would be to any adult or child who has lost a parent”.
A short published in a US women’s magazine drew such a visceral, overwhelming response that she expanded the text to a book – which spiralled to No. 1 in three weeks. Thereafter, she had reason to think “this story was bigger than a page”.
With what she is sure was her mother’s guidance, Mary Lou found her way to Labyrinth Theatre NY where the gifted Martha Wollner became her acting coach, co-writer and director.
When ‘The God Box’ opens here she promises “a very full show, a technical one with video and sound landscape, hand designed visuals throughout”.
Fear not a mumsy maudlin filter. When she did Edinburgh Fringe, British Theatre Magazine gave her five stars: “And it is fringe [theatre], remember. It’s much darker than people expect and people don’t expect to laugh as much as they do”.
It’s the way she tells them, the clear musicality of her voice channelling her mother’s “quirky, independent, spunky” spirit, “a woman who took no guff”, worked when few mothers did, and prayed often and in writing. As actress, Mary Lou Quinlan worked hard with Wollner in learning “how to drop into those moments as if they had never happened before”.
In the play’s three years she has dedicated all proceeds to hospice and cancer hospitals, raising €300,000. Lime Tree’s are dedicated to Milford Hospice and Irish Cancer Society.
