Walsh Ballroom Makes London Debut at Riverside

As previously tipped (See News, 11 Aug 2008), Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s latest Fringe First-winning play The New Electric Ballroom is transferring to London following its success in Edinburgh last summer. As part of a continuing international tour, the production, directed by Walsh himself, will have a limited season at west London’s Riverside Studios from 5 to 29 March 2009 (previews from 3 March).

The New Electric Ballroom is the companion play to Walsh’s 2007 Fringe First winner The Walworth Farce, which transferred this past autumn to the National Theatre, where it ran in rep in the NT Cottesloe and was nominated for a Whatsonstage.com Award for Best New Comedy.

Both pieces concern the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives – and what happens when we become stuck in them. While The Walworth Farce is set in a flat occupied by three Irish men on the Walworth Road in London, The New Electric Ballroom centres on three Irish women trapped in a house in a small fishing village. Continuing the commonalities, both plays are presented by the Galway-based Druid Theatre company – Walworth is directed by Druid’s Mikel Murfi, who appears in Ballroom.

Murphy is joined in The New Electric Ballroom by Rosaleen Linehan, Ruth McCabe and Catherine Walsh. The production is designed by Sabine Dargent with lighting by Sinead McKenna and sound by Gregory Clark.

Enda Walsh’s other plays include Disco Pigs, Bedbound and Chatroom. Druid, founded in 1975, was the first professional theatre company in Ireland outside Dublin. Druid has successfully championed numerous Irish playwrights, bringing them to international recognition, including Tom Murphy and Martin McDonagh.

– by Terri Paddock