The Big Girl
By Conor MacNamara
6
What do abortions, one-liners, and a goldfish
have in common? Hugh Travers’s The Big Girl
offers no shortage of analogies & juxtaposition
whilst dealing with a subject matter that
remains unrivalled in its ability to polarise
Irish society.
Based loosely on Sophocles’ classic Greek
tragedy Antigone, our protagonist Anna is
pregnant under suspicious circumstances, and
is quickly offered a ‘weekend shopping trip to
the UK’ by her uncle, a powerful TD. Instead,
she takes to comedy as a defence mechanism,
appearing at open mic nights to crack cheesy
one-liners and abortion jokes half comedic,
half shield against her own grim reality.
Now before we throw our moral compasses
in regarding the subject matter, one has to
simply appreciate the sheer fun and
intelligence behind this production; by
contrasting two extremes of light comedy and
dark moral narrative, Travers allows us to
confront our own political and moral
insecurities, whilst giving us enough comedic
punctuation that we can still engage with the
characters & story on an individual level. They
are flawed, ultimately self-destructive people,
and their reactions and motivations highlight
just how ambiguous a subject matter like
abortion truly is, and why it makes great
theatre!
Let me underline that this is a play reading, a
rehearsal not without its hiccups, with the
jokes occasionally coming too often and too
flat, with pacing and comedic timing being the
key drawback from the performance. And yet
there is a unique charm to the raw reading,
with actors having to fluctuate between
distraught passion and light comedy on the
flick of a script page. The opening night of this
production will be one to mark on your
calendar, as this is theatre at its core!
The Big Girl is written by Hugh Travers and
directed by Maeve Stone, and was shown at
The New Theatre on Feb 26th
By Conor MacNamara
Writing your first theatre production is hard,
especially when it’s horror. Recreating a preexisting character that already has a large body
of work based on it (not a lot of it good) is
harder. Self-funding and starring in the play on
top of everything is worthy of recognition!
Such is the nature of Slender, the new play
by Shane O’Regan, centred around the Slender
Man, a creature that crawled out of the
underbelly of the internet in 09’ and has
refused to grant anyone a peaceful night’s
sleep since.
Starring Stephen O’Leary, Hilary BowenWalsh, and Regan himself, the debut from
Reality:Check
productions
blends
contemporary urban myth with conventional
horror tropes to create something both drama
and terror. The play introduces us to Alex &
Rachael, a pair of lovebird hikers lost in the
woods, who stumble upon the secluded cabin
of obsessed horror writer turned fanatical
hermit, Fiachra. Stranded for the night in his
*ahem* hospitality, the trust and sanity of the
trio begins to unravel, amidst a backdrop of
demented wall scribblings, real-life murders,
and spiralling acts of instability and violence.
All under the faceless stare of the Slender
Man.
“I didn’t sleep for three nights at one stage”
Regan half-jokingly admits when describing
his experience in writing the play; “You can’t
help but react to it.” Asked about the future
plans of Reality:Check productions, Regan is
quick to drop hints at a planned invisible
theatre, scheduled to spontaneously appear
somewhere in the streets of Dublin in the near
future.
Slender is premiering at the Theatre Upstairs
on the 24th February and running until the 7th
of March.