Come The Dawn

Ballinrobe Musical society won the much sought after AIMS Best Overall Show Award with a stunning production of The Pirate Queen and this year they turned their attention to Peter Kennedy, their director of thirteen years. They gave his revised premiere of Come The Dawn a technical production that you would not see on the professional stage.

 In a stunning, emotional, sledge hammer of a second act, they brought the conflict of pre-Treaty Belfast to painful life in a Community School auditorium. A helicopter descended from the roof (no fly floor here) that would put Miss Saigon to shame. It had two passengers, a lighted control panel, a functioning door and a roaring realistic sound and fumes. In a twenty-minute period, there were four onstage shootings and at times it looked like Martin McDonagh meets Midsomer Murders.

The conventional wisdom is that musical theatre cannot sustain such bloodshed and cruelty as a cast sang love songs, torch songs and Our Day Will come amid revelations of betrayal, dark politics and madness. Then a finale where a pub exploded, blowing out doors and windows and a chorus stood on a partially burning (clever gas fuelled flames) and sang a song of hope and renewal – Come The Dawn. I had seen the first outing of this show in Galway in 2006 and was rightly impressed with a no-frills, raw emotional evening of strong political and social significance. I have been a Peter Kennedy fan since he brought Ham to the Waterford Festival in 1986. There were little technical or big production values and it was still a positive milestone in Irish musical theatre.

Theatre needs such a slap or explosion of reality and Ballinrobe, a town of 2,500 souls gave their audience, a blockbuster of a production and that is a major achievement.

 The storyline of opposing factions within and Orange and Green tribe is deep and complex and with hindsight frighteningly accurate. The villain of the piece is a rogue RUC superior, Davy Saunders who deals from both sides of the divide. There is a tragic Orange Order Grand Master whose wife was killed in a boobytrap bombing and his daughter is in love with the hero John Thompson an RUC Constable. The Sinn Féin/IRA side are represented by a ceasefire pro-Treaty political figure in a three quarter length leather coat. There’s a hot heat Danny Quinn who suspects a sell out as does a Loyalist paramilitary, Jimmy Reid who is frighteningly manic. Into that web you have a series of quality female roles (some burdened with banal love songs) who give the work a stark emotional tone of some depth and understanding.

 There is a lot of exposition and position setting in Act I with big songs like They’ve Built a Bloody Barricade, Nationalist People, Is This Empire Great, This Night of Madness and the emotional finale of Act I – Come The Dawn.

Act II is a blockbuster of helicopter, killings, betrayal and cruelty amid revelation and a clunky back story of mistaken parenthood. A British junior official sings a comic G&S style parody about solving conflict with A Cup of Tea. There is an almost surreal Political Cabaret a daft fairytale of killings and a stunning, numbing pub explosion.

 Padraic Costello was a chilling loyalist. Jimmy Reid who created a revulsion in the audience as did John Murphy as the hot-head Danny Quinn. Walter Donoghue was a credible Emerson in a much under-written role. Richard Crumlish was a strong Robert Wilson and Michael Coen was a powerful Davy Saunders. Lisa Parsons was a fine Lisa Wilson, Siobhán Campbell and Ann Kirrane shone in a wickedly satirical Donegal. Paula O’Neill was a very sympathetic Carmel Gallagher and Sinead Heneghan was an excellent Catríona who was minx, temptress and tower of strength who had some of the finest songs and duets in the show.

 This production was an outstanding example of what Irish musical theatre can deliver. Ballinrobe have once again laid down the marker and brought a new reality to musical productions.