Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Blue Thunder, an immersive, site-specific show, staged in a  minibus for an audience of just 12 people at a time, is coming to Galway’s Black Box Theatre from October 16-18.

Written by Padraic Walsh and directed by Cathal Cleary, this award-winning play examines what happens when the people who you rely on to be there for you, have nothing left to give.

It’s 3am in small-town Ireland. The nightclub is closed, the chipper is chaotic. Down a quiet side-street, local taxi-driver, Brian is sitting in his minibus, having finished for the night.

But then his drunk sons, Ray and Dara, call and demand a lift home. They arrive at the taxi, loud and full of booze, songs and stories, and it soon becomes clear that one of them plans to do something horrendous. And those on the bus will be going with him.

Billed as ‘funny and frightening by turns’, this is the latest joint project from Mayo man Padraic Walsh and Cathal Cleary from Roscommon. The two met while doing their Masters in Theatre at NUI Galway in 2005 and began their drama careers in Ireland before moving to the UK. In recent years, they decided to return home and create the kind of work here that they wanted to see themselves.

Their love for character-driven theatre that “creates real excitement and forward propulsion” comes from their years in London, they say. It was there that they joined forces to workshop and present readings of Padraic’s plays in venues like the Jerwood and for HighTide Theatre.

Pictured: Gary Lilburn who plays the dad, Brian, in Blue Thunder.