Cirencester’s Barn Theatre has built an enviable reputation for mounting first-class productions for the small stage, often with only two or three actors taking multiple roles, and visitors to this revival of one of its most successful shows will not be disappointed.
It has everything: energy, wit, technical wizardry, moments of poignant drama and a meaningful message. Throw in a bit of Irish dancing and a happy ending—what more could you want?
Well, two outstanding virtuoso actors, and it gets those too, Gerard McCabe and Shaun Blaney reprising their roles from the theatre’s earlier productions in 2021 and 2022, as poor Irish lads with dreams of stardom, recruited as extras when Hollywood comes to County Kerry to make a no-warts-at-all soupy movie about a fictional Ireland.
Perhaps writer Marie Jones was inspired by the true story about less than romantic happenings in the community during the filming of Ryan’s Daughter, for life is very different in real life for the happy-go-lucky locals depicted in The Quiet Valley, the title of the film being produced in her play.
Its star, Caroline Giovanni, is having trouble with the Irish accent (John Wayne in The Quiet Man hardly bothered) and flirts with her bit of rough, Jake Quinn (Blaney), to use him as a voice coach (coach, not couch). But when a tragedy hits the local town—stones in the pockets giving the play its title—the dichotomy between the celluloid world and the actual one comes into sharp focus.
It is a play about dreams as much as about the Dream Factory—and for every person who makes theirs come true, Jake says, "fifty come home with no arse in their trousers."
Blaney and McCabe take on all 15 characters in a quick-fire succession that is at first dazzling, then simply joyous, with a cap, a half-worn jacket or a scarf enough to identify each of them. It is as if someone flicks a switch to transform Jake into the effete assistant director Simon, or McCabe’s Charlie into the glamorous star Caroline. And anyone less likely to be mistaken for a screen goddess (sorry to dump on your chances with central casting, Gerard) is hard to imagine, but that surely is part of the joke.
The play, directed by Jones’s son Matthew McElhinney and with brilliantly integrated AV design by Benjamin Collins and photographer Alex Tabrizi, makes extensive use of film-makers’ jargon and those in-themselves absurd background scenes shot when the stars supposedly present are away relaxing in their Winnebagos.
A fast-cut routine between film execs and walk-ons almost interrupted proceedings, due to the spontaneous applause in the audience, but this was surpassed by the acclaim for a burst of spirited Irish traditional dancing, choreographed by Fleur Mellor, toward the end. Some sort of irony there, as it would be just the sort of jiggery that MegaFilm Inc would have insisted upon for their Emerald Isle fantasy.
But what if the film to be made were the fact, not the fiction, in which the Californian incomers are the bystanders of the unregarded drama around them? I recall some old line (was it Mickey Rooney?) "let’s make the film right here." And so comes the happy ending, as one dream in 51 is realised. It has in fact become literally true, Jones's play having gone across the world with translations into 38 languages.
A final video projection shows a line-up of applauding celebrities, whom it is entertaining to try to identify, like those on the Dr Pepper sleeve. I briefly spotted Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan and Adrian Dunbar. The stars had become extras, the extras stars.
The production visits Cheltenham, Bolton and Salisbury before a wider tour of the UK and Ireland in 2025.