Fred & Alice Community Hall, Sherkin Island

There is probably no more appropriate a setting to see Mord from Game of Thrones than a windswept island off the south coast of Ireland on a rainy night.

But is wasn’t really Mord, it was actor Ciarán Bermingham, who plays the turnkey at the Eeyrie in the first season of the hugely popular TV series. And his role as Fred to Cora Fenton’s Alice in John Sheehan’s play is about as far from Mord as you can imagine.

This is one of four productions being staged by the hugely ambitious West Cork Fit-Up Theatre Festival — it comprises one show a week, for four weeks, throughout August. The venues vary from local village halls, to marquees and community centres, and also takes in three of the region’s islands — Sherkin, Bere and Heir.

The intimate locations and smaller audiences are reminiscent of travelling theatres of old – and this is exactly the atmosphere the Ballydehob-based theatre group Blood in the Alley hopes to create, and has done so successfully for five years now. The choice of Sheehy’s tale of two love-struck friends, bound together by their mental challenges and an institutionalised life, is an inspired one. Fred introduces himself to the audience in the blustery marquee, by running to the front of the stage and launching into an alphabetical history of music in an almost trance-like state. It’s not long before the audience spots that Fred has an intellectual disability, which includes an OCD-like interest in music and words. It could be autism, but his facial tics and nervous fingers suggest something else, too. Soon we meet Alice, his bubbly, hyper-active pig-tailed friend, who describes her hilarious first encounter with Fred. She was lying on the ground and he said to her: “Get up”. From that moment on, it was “love at first sight”, she tells us — for her, anyway. But while the couple seem an unlikely duo, it all seems to work. It’s a fitting metaphor for the theatre festival itself, which despite all the odds, and the unseasonal weather, manages to marry all its odd little elements — perfectly.