Marie Jones delivers black comedy of money and morals
Marie Jones makes Directorial debut with all female black comedy. Fly me to the moon, the brand new play from Marie Jones makes its debut in the Baby Grand at the Grand Opera House on Tuesday 31 January until Saturday 18 February. Not only does the play come from the pen of acclaimed local playwright, it is also her directorial debut. Frustrated by the lack of good female roles local actresses Tara Lynne O'Neill and Katie Tumelty approached Marie and, after some creative brainstorming, Fly Me To The Moon was born with Tara Lynne and Katie starring. Photo by Simon Graham/Harrison Photography
FLY Me To The Moon, the new comedy from Marie Jones, was penned after “a bit of craic and a few bottles of wine” during which actresses Tara Lynne O’Neill and Katie Tumelty lamented the lack of meaty stage roles for local actresses.
It was a situation their friend Jones could relate to - her Charabanc Theatre Company, formed in the 1980s, grew out of a need to put local women in leading roles on the stage of the Lyric.
“In the past I looked at mill workers - women who were overlooked and underpaid. This time I’m looking at the role of care workers, another largely female profession that often doesn’t get the credit or payment it deserves.
“My mother was very well looked after in a care home for some years and so I know firsthand what a demanding job it can be.
“What interests me here is the struggle of the working class woman, doing her best to get by.”
The action is set in a house where an old man is being looked after by two care workers - Lynne O’Neill and Tumelty. When he dies they decide to draw his pension, reasoning that the government has fleeced them for years anyway and it won’t do the deceased any harm to have his finances going into the pockets of two well-intentioned women.
“They feel the government has treated them with no respect and, well, why should they respect the government? But getting the money involves a lot of scheming and slowly the whole thing spirals out of control, leading to a catastrophic and very funny chain of events.
“They are deeper and deeper in trouble and the whole thing brings their morals into question: how wrong where they to do what they did? How do they get themselves out of the mire of this disaster as it unfolds?”
How funny is this play? “It’s hilarious” says Jones, laughing. “Sure if there was no tragedy in this place we’d never be laughing! Honestly, I can hardly talk about this without laughing. It’s just mad. But at the same time it’s a situation that many people will be able to relate to on some level.”
Jones defines the core of her work as “dark but always humourous, and about the underdogs, the people who don’t really have a voice”. Here she puts the focus back on female characters, strong and fiesty types who want to bend the rules to sieze the day.
Born into a working class Protestant family in Belfast, the playwright has always focused her work on the disenfranchised, easefully bringing humour and wit to her drama with her earthy, jokey style that understands local vernacular and humour so very well.
Marie, who was awarded an OBE in 2002, has written a string of plays including Tribes (1990), The Hamster Wheel (1991), Fighting the Shadows (1992), Wingnut and the Sprog (1994) and A Night in November (1994), a play about the Troubles which was performed in London’s West End and off-Broadway, and more recently, The Blind Fiddler (2004) and Women on the Verge of HRT.
As a film actress Jones is known for playing Sarah Conlon in 1993 film In the Name of the Father, which detailed the plight of the Guilford Four and also starred Daniel Day Lewis and Pete Postelthwaite.
But Marie is best known for Stones in His Pockets, her witty stage play about two extras in a Hollywood movie being shot in a small Irish village and the resulting impact on that community; it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1999, was later performed on Broadway to critical acclaim and scooped Best Comedy in the 2001 Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards in London. It has now been staged in 20 countries and translated into 16 languages.
“When I wrote Stones in his Pockets people were always like, why are you writing a play about two men for? And I said, I’m a woman and I’m putting words in their mouths - how empowering is that?
“But I do feel we need more strong roles for women in local theatre and I’m very happy to be able to contribute to that.”
Jones has a knack for finding the humour in even the most grim scenarios and her eye for the stong-willed woman, Ulster-born and bred, is fired with the charge of firsthand experience and an unpretentious, uplifting reverence for the colloquial.
Fly Me To The Moon runs at the Baby Grand, Grand Opera House, Belfast, January 31 to February 18. Visit www.goh.co.uk or call the box office on 02890 241 919.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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