Little Gem
Venue: Olympia Theatre, Dame Street, Dublin 2 Website: http://www.ticketmaster.ie Price: €22.65 Date: April 4th-9th, 2011 Time: 8:00 pm
Love, sex, birth, death, dildos and salsa classes: Little Gem sees three generations of Dublin women on a wild and constantly surprising journey. After sell-out seasons in New York, London and Paris and a sold-out 7-week run at
Ireland’s National Theatre and a run at the Olympia (with MCD) in 2010, a sellout Nationwide tour and following a four week tour of Australia (in Canberra, Sydney, Paramatta and Hobart) the ever popular Little Gem returns to the Olympia for one week only prior to a second countrywide tour. Anita Reeves, who has been with the show since its premiere in 2009, will hand over the role of Kay to the much loved Anne Kent, star of Fair City for six years. She will join Neili Conroy and Birdy Beaman who have been wowing audiences since the first Olympia production in 2010. Gúna Nua director and founder Paul Meade first read Elaine Murphy’s Little Gem in 2008 and promptly staged and directed the impressive debut in the Dublin Fringe Festival where it won several awards and went on to great acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2009 winning the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award. Kay’s got an itch that Gem can’t scratch (but maybe Kermit can) … Lorraine attacks a customer at work and her boss wants her to see a psychiatrist … Amber has fierce bad indigestion and the sambucas aren’t getting rid of it. And then there’s Paul, the bollix, who is just using Amber until he can get to Australia … and there’s the hairy man who fancies Lorraine but fails to rise to the occasion … and of course Gem , who doesn’t like the neighbours coming in to ‘mind’ him. If all that wasn’t bad enough, Little Gem makes his presence felt and life is never the same again. Under the direction of Paul Meade, the cast interweave their characters’ life experiences as they cope with modern life’s daily pressures and the heart-breaking toll of inevitable tragedies, expertly blending slapstick humour and sharp comic timing with strength, courage and honesty.
FIE Dublin Events Guide 