73rd Ballymoney Drama Festival
Wednesday 7th - Saturday 10th March 2012
8.00pm Ballymoney Town Hall
Adjudicator: Jim Wolstencroft
Randal Patrick McMurphy feigns insanity to avoid the work farm. When he meets his fellow inmates at the asylum, he realises that they make a lot more sense than the staff looking after them. McMurphy leads a revolt with thought-provoking and humorous results. Contains some strong language
Three couples, celebrating their 25th Wedding Anniversaries, discover that they have never been legally married. This is a wonderfully funny play in which the pompous get their come-uppance, and a particularly henpecked husband suddenly sees the prospect of turning the tables on his wife.
The play tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag, her manipulative aging mother, whose interference in Maureen's first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play's dénouement.
This is a play about a family with not just a generation gap but a class divide as well, since Martin – the son of a Doncaster miner – has married into the southern bourgeoisie. He has invited his elderly parents to visit him in the Lake District. They demonstrate their love by driving him to distraction with their repetition, banality and nit-picking. This causes the pent up frustrations of a lifetime to be released in a fine mix of love and biting humour!
Followed by Final Adjudication