Actress Clare Barrett  returns to her native city with a show that explores how people deal with the unexpected. It’s a fun night out for a group of pals, she tells JUDY MURPHY.

“Very funny, very heartfelt and a show for everyone,” is how Renmore actress Clare Barrett describes Gold in the Water, a musical comedy that will be staged at the city’s Town Hall Theatre on Friday and Saturday, November 7 and 8.

Gold in the Water, which was co-created by Shane O’Reilly and Paul Curley, with music by award-winning composer Denis Clohessy, features a tap-dancing rabbit, a singing terrapin and a magical goldfish in its all-singing, all-dancing cast.

Bart, who is married to Harvey, has a fabulous life, but it’s upended when a mysterious goldfish lands on the doorstep and crashes their first-anniversary celebrations. Harvey wants to take the creature in, but Bart won’t — and there are consequences.

Love is put on the line, friendships are tested and Bart must risk accepting change, or face the prospect of ending up alone.

Claire plays a zealous pet-shop owner, the couple’s nemesis, in the show. She’s been involved from the start, from when Gold in the Water was first presented as a work-in-progress in 2015, at a festival in Birmingham.

“Musicals take a long time to get to stage,” she explains of its gestation. And, of course, there was a pandemic which held up everything.

However, Gold in the Water came to fruition in 2023, when it played Dublin’s Project as well as the Mermaid in Bray, and it has now received funding for a short Irish tour.

Although it was originally workshopped in Birmingham, “the lads wanted the premiere to be in Ireland and kept working away at it, waiting until 2023, when they could put seven characters on stage and five live musicians”, says Clare of the writers’ ambitions.

That’s a big contingent these days, especially when it comes to touring and Clare is delighted they got the funds to go on the road, even if it’s just a short, three-venue outing.

“It’s not often you get an opportunity to be on stage with a large cast,” she says.

Gold in the Water is unusual in that it has a gay couple at its centre, but she stresses the musical is not about them being gay.

“That’s just what they are,” she says. “They are a couple and there are other couples on stage too, all different kinds of couples.”

That’s one reason Clare liked it from the off..

“We’re all people and all dealing with issues and we are all the same.”

Previous audiences also loved that it was simply about relationships, and the ups and downs of living with someone else.

Clare delights in the process of developing new work and there’s a lot of that going on at present, she says.

But there’s also a pleasure in returning to the familiar, which she has done for the new series of the BBC sitcom, Only Child, which was first broadcast last year, with Gregor Fisher and Greg McHugh playing Ken and Richard, a squabbling father and son.

Pictured: Renmore woman Clare Barrett cut her teeth on shows with the  Renmore Pantomime Society and Galway Musical Society.