My Friend's Play!

No apologies for shameless publicity due to excitement.

Arts Ireland and Riverside Studios present

Brendan at The Chelsea

Directed by Adrian Dunbar and Rosalind Scanlon

Written by Janet Behan

It’s the 60s, New York and we are in that legendary bohemian bolt hole, The Chelsea Hotel. Arthur Miller is just across the hall, the sound of Ornett Coleman is drifting down from the penthouse and the symphony of 24th Street is rising up and in through the open window of Brendan Behan’s room. He’s hung over, he’s broke and way past the delivery date of his latest book, the first line of which he has yet to write. He was told to stop drinking or he’d be dead in six months – that was two years ago.

Today is not going well. Lianne, the Latino dancer charged with looking after him, is not putting up with his bullshit. George, his composer friend from upstairs, won’t play ball with any of his bleak assessments of life. His mistress keeps ringing, the bills aren’t paid and a wire arrives from Dublin with the kind of news that’s guaranteed to put his blood pressure through the roof.

Brendan at The Chelsea, a new play by Janet Behan starring Adrian Dunbar, is an anarchic and searing reassessment of the myth and the life of one of Ireland’s least understood sons. A man who kept roomfuls of people laughing with his stories, he could strike up a conversation with everyone from the Astors to a bum on the Bowery. Arguably the world's first media star reporters bent on entrapment pursued him everywhere, a man who was jailed for being in the IRA, a sexual conundrum, a hostile working class hero who put the great debates of the day into the mouths of ordinary people for the first time.A man so scared of anoniminity and so charged by the disease of alcoholism that running through the foyer of The Bristol Hotel naked, was minor on his scale of outrageousness. Shane MacGowan and Pete Docherty take note, you’re only in the halfpenny place.

RUNNING TIME
1 hour 50 minutes (including one 15 minute interval)

Studio 2

Tuesday 15 January

to Sunday 3 February

(no show Tuesday 22 January)

Tuesdays to Saturdays: 8.00pm

Sundays: 7.30pm

Except Thursday 17 January: 7.00pm (Press Night)

Saturday matinees: 3.00pm

TICKETS:£15 (£12.50 concs.)

Previews: £10 on 15 and 16 JanuaryEarly Bird: £12.50 (if booked before Friday 4 January - please quote EARLY BIRD when booking

AGE SUITABILITY
Suitable for ages 12+.

LATECOMERS POLICY
Please note there is a strict no latecomers policy operated for this show.