Carraignabhfear take top prize with poignant wedding play

With a play about two women who both died on their wedding days, Carraignabhfear Guild won the national ICA drama finals.

Margaret Dinan and Joan Moloney starred in Positive Dead People, a one-act play by Pauline Shanahan. They were directed by Dan Twomey, of Carraignabhfear Drama Group; Rosarie Lomasney was stage assistant (prompter), and her daughter, Vivienne, did hair and make-up.

Joan played Mo, a doctor who choked to death on a salmon bone at her wedding reception. Margaret was Milly, a chef, who collapsed and died from an aneurism outside the church after she’d married. Understandably, both are a little annoyed when they arrive in Limbo holding their bouquets and a copy of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

“You have two brides onstage, looking down from Limbo in their wedding dresses, looking at their own wedding receptions. It’s a comedy. They’re looking at their husbands to see how happy or sad they are. It’s amazing what people say about you when you’re dead. They see their funerals. Being dead isn’t all that bad — they never realised they’d get hot tea and éclairs in Limbo,” says Rosarie.

While Joan won a national ICA art competition some years ago, this was Carraignabhfear’s first entry in the national drama contest.

“We were the only guild from the south to enter — about seven guilds entered altogether, including guilds from Blanchardstown and Wicklow. So to win was a great achievement,” says Rosarie, who said it was a difficult play to learn.

“There were only two in the cast and they had so much to say. We had 36 A4 sheets to learn — I had to learn those, too, because I was the prompter. I had only a split second to come in if anybody made a slip.”

Carraignabhfear ICA members have performed in many drama competitions, in shows such as The Mad Woman of Cork, Chicago, Making the Will and An Irish Wake. For Positive Dead People, they were presented with a Cuchulainn crystal vase on a timber base, with the engraving: ‘An Grianán Drama Festival 2014 Overall Winner’. In addition, each cast member received a comedy/tragedy mask trophy.

Carraignabhfear ICA Guild has 23 members. They recently put on a festive party for senior citizens, serving 80 people in their community Christmas dinner.