Tomorrow and Friday the Hop's Moore Theater will present Barabbas, an internationally known Irish company set to perform "The Whiteheaded Boy," playwright Lennox Robinson's 1916 Irish classic.
"The Whiteheaded Boy" tells the story of an Irish family, designed to analyze and satirize traditional Irish culture.
When Dennis Geoghegan, the youngest son and the darling of his mother, returns home after failing his medical exams for the third time at Trinity College in Dublin, the question of his future becomes the heated debate of his family and town . At the expense of his siblings' lives and dreams, he had been sent to Trinity to become a doctor and make the family proud.
This special treatment makes the rest of the family feel understandably resentful toward him. His jealous brothers and sisters want to exile him to Canada as punishment for his laziness, but he is engaged to Delia Duffy, the daughter of a wealthy villager. Her father, seeing an opportunity for profit, then decides to try extracting money from the already struggling Geoghegan family by offering a settlement. As the play continues, more twists develop, affecting Dennis's fate.
The plot is somewhat mild, but the lunacy brought to it by Barabbas lightens up the proceedings while retaining the work's initial intent: to examine Irish culture.
The company is made up of three founding members (Veronica Coburn, Raymond Keane and Mikel Murfi) and one more recent addition, Louis Lovett. All of the founding members studied at the Lecoc School and received training in physical performance.
Aside from her comic abilities, Coburn has evidenced her talent through writing and directing. She wrote and directed "Sick Dying Dead Buried Out," wrote and performed in "Out the Back Door" and directed "Half Eight Mass of a Tuesday."
Throughout the course of her career she has performed in several famous British theaters, such as the Abbey, the Peacock, with Rough Magic, Horizon, Copol, Pigsback and Theatre of Fire. Coburn is also the chairperson of Dublin Project@ the Mint.
Keane has worked as a freelance actor with Grapevine, Wet Paint, Copol, Horizon and the Abbey, among other theaters.
Before founding Barabbas, Keane worked in the television industry as a writer, actor and puppeteer for over nine different programs. He still writes for the Irish pre-school series, "The Morbegs." Raymond has also appeared in the films "The Boy From Mercury," "Sweety Barrett" and "St. Patrick."
Murfi, the third founder of Barabbas, has helped write and perform all of the company's shows to date. His films include "The Commitments," "Guiltrip," "The Butcher Boy," "Sweety Barrett" and "The Three Joes." He has written and performed in "Nothing To It," "Nighthawks," "Ten Minute Tales" and "Den 2" for Irish television.
Lovett, the fourth and final member of the cast, trained at Down to Earth Academy. He recently performed in "Diamonds in the Soil," "Fools For Love," "Hay Fever" and "Metamorphosis."
Lovett is also an accomplished musician; he is a baritone singer, and plays saxophone, tin whistle and percussion.
There are twelve characters total in the performance, and eleven are played by the founders. Lovett plays only the title character, Dennis. Each of the other three actors crosses age and gender lines, and frequently plays several characters in one scene.
Past Barabbas endeavors have included "Come Down from the Mountain," "John Clown," "Macbeth," "Half Eight Mass of a Tuesday," "Strokehauling," "Out the Back Door" and "Barabbas," a television series that earned an Entertainment Award in the 1997 PanCeltic Film and Television Awards. In 1998, the company's production of "The Whiteheaded Boy" earned three ESB Irish Times Theatre Awards nominations.
