Shamtown show to air at Galway theatre in November

Show has been written by manager of The Saw Doctors

THE Saw Doctors manager Ollie Jennings has written a theatre show that is inspired by the memories of people who worked in and experienced the arts scene in Tuam.

Shamtown will be produced professionally at the Mick Lally Theatre in Galway and be shown from November 15 to 22, under the award-winning team of theatre director Andrew Flynn and musical director Carl Kennedy.

The show will be presented by a cast of eight actors and three musicians including the drummer from The Saw Doctors Rickie O’Neill, actors Jarlath Tivnan and Midie Corcoran, with singers Eilish McCarthy, Eoin Mullins and Emily Donoghue.

It is set in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Macnas Theatre Company paraded Gulliver down Shop Street in Galway; The Waterboys recorded Fisherman’s Blues in An Spidéal; and a young band from Tuam played the opening slot at the first Féile in Thurles, the Trip to Tipp in summer 1990.

Tuam, often called Shamtown, was bursting with music and craic, until the hard hit of recession in 1980s. However, a quiet magic was still alive in the back room of McEvoy’s Jersey Bar in Tuam, where two young songwriters, Leo Moran and Davy Carton, started singing about Presentation Boarders, first love and lads wishing they were on the N17.

Following a script workshop with director Andrew Flynn, Ollie Jennings created a theatre show, built around the story songs made famous by The Saw Doctors.

The result of that script is Shamtown, a joyous new play bursting with music, storytelling and fun, charting how a gang of unlikely lads from Tuam captured the heart of a nation and beyond.

The show has been funded by the Galway City Council Arts Office, the Town Hall Theatre Patron Scheme, and an Agility Award that Ollie Jennings received from The Arts Council.

For more information or to buy tickets, visit: www.tht.ie.