Galloping Irish Comedy Heading To The NZIAF

Galloping Irish Comedy Heading To The New Zealand International Arts Festival

Celebrated Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s devastatingly funny play The Walworth Farce is on the largest international tour for a new work in recent times, and it’s heading to the New Zealand International Arts Festival for 2010.

From Galway to Edinburgh, from London to New York, the Druid Theatre Company’s production of The Walworth Farce has wowed audiences everywhere.

The Walworth Farce received the prestigious Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007. It will have been performed in 20 cities and five countries by the time it arrives in Wellington.

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Set in a grotty flat on Walworth Road in South London, The Walworth Farce follows tyrannical dad Dinny and his two adult sons Sean and Blake whose daily routine begins at 11am. Iron the dress. Get the roast chicken. Brush the wigs. Start the show. Over the next two hours the trio perform a play: five people will get killed, they will consume six cans of beer, 15 crackers with spreadable cheese, 10 pink wafer biscuits and serve the chicken with a strange blue sauce.

“The Irish certainly have a knack for telling stories. While you’re busily keeping up with the antics and story lines of the Farce, nothing prepares you for where the play leads you. Slapstick collides abruptly with the silence of shock. Walsh is one of Ireland’s most thrilling and innovative living playwrights,” says Lissa Twomey, Artistic Director of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Beginning in 1975 in Galway City, The Druid is strongly committed to the writer and the ensemble being at the centre of its theatre making. It is also touring Walsh’s follow up success The New Electric Ballroom – the companion piece to The Walworth Farce – which also scooped the Fringe First Award in at the Edinburgh Fringe last year.

Walsh himself has been unstoppable since he received international acclaim with Disco Pigs in 1996. His plays have been translated into 20 languages. His film Hunger about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, written with director Steve McQueen, won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year as well as the Sydney Film Prize and the best picture at the Evening Standard British Film Awards.

Taught English by Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, Walsh is from Dublin and began his theatre career in County Cork. He now lives in North West London with his wife and daughter.

The Festival season of The Walworth Farce is sponsored by Clemenger BBDO with support from Culture Ireland.

WHEN: 17-21 March

WHERE: Opera House Gold Partners: New Zealand Post Group, TV3, Clemenger BBDO, Pacific Blue. Funders: Absolutely Positively Wellington, Creative New Zealand

“The Walworth Farce is as brilliant an original as you are likely to see in the theater this year” The New York Sun

ENDS

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