Audience can join in a little skullduggery

By NIGEL GEARING

As Scene I ends in A Skull In Connemara the audience is asked to vacate the pews in Devonport's Gothic-style Presbyterian church and head through the dry-ice-laden graveyard to a grave whose inhabitants are about to be exhumed, and Scene II begins.

It was once common in Catholic Ireland for bones to be removed from graveyards to make way for more recent arrivals. In a nation where cremation was not an option, this procedure took place every seven years.

Tim Raby plays Mick Dowd, whose job it is to make room for the newly dead. On this night he must remove his wife's bones.

Village rumour has it that when Dowd hit a wall while driving drunk, his wife was already dead and he had killed her.

His most loyal friend, Mairtin Hanlon (played by Ryan Lampp), offers to join his mate with a spade.

This young rascal is constantly in trouble for mischievous acts around the village - which isn't the best when your brother (Tom Hanlon, played by Des Wallace) is the local constable.

As was the custom, a member of the constabulary always witnessed the bone-removal ceremonies. Tom Hanlon fancies himself as an Inspector Morse-type and - as the digging starts - expounds his own theories about what happened the night Mick's wife died.

But all conversation is suspended when Dowd finds his wife's remains have already been removed. That ends Scene II and the audience returns to the church for Scenes III and IV.

Tom and Mairtin's grandmother, Mary Rafferty, is played by June Britton. Mary has always had her own theory on what happened to Dowd's wife and every night for the past seven years has had a drink with the man she will very soon accuse of murder.

Real Theatre Company director David Coddington wanted to do this script justice and so went in search of a fitting setting to stage the award-winning Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's play. On seeing the historic brick St Paul's Church he made an appointment with the Rev Sherri Weinberg to talk about his dream.

"The approach was a tentative, 'This would be a great venue'," she says as she shows how the stage will be erected to give it more height and the basin used for baptisms will become a fireplace.

Coddington says: "McDonagh writes about the Irish on the edge of society, who are stuck in their own worlds, isolated from each other and who only come together through necessity. He evokes a similar emotional response as does the film The Station Agent and he does it through black humour and poignancy."

A Skull in Connemara is the second play in a trilogy that began with The Beauty Queen Of Leenane and concludes with The Lonesome West. The Beauty Queen of Lennane won four Tony Awards in 1996. It also won a Laurence Olivier Award and a BBC award for best new play.

Performance

* What: A Skull In Connemara, by Martin McDonagh

* Who: Real Theatre Company

* Where and when: St Paul's Church and graveyard, Victoria Rd, Devonport; Oct12-13, 19-20, 26-27, Nov 2-3, 7pm; Oct 14-16, 21-23, 28-30, Nov 4-6, 8pm