A Man of No Importance transfers to West End
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
REGAN De Wynter’s production of the chamber musical A Man of No Importance, which played to full houses at the Union Theatre last November, will transfer to the West End’s Arts Theatre, where it will run from February 9 to February 27, 2010.
Previously Posted: The chamber musical A Man of No Importance will receive its European premiere at the Union Theatre, where it runs from November 11 to December 5, 2009.
With book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty (the team behind Ragtime The Musical), A Man of No Importance is about the power the theatre has to transform our lives and the capacity each of us has to love one another.
Based on a 1994 independent film starring Albert Finney, A Man Of No Importance is about the journey of self-discovery and acceptance of Alfie Byrne, a Dublin bus conductor who is prone to reciting poetry to the patrons on his bus.
He is also the director of the local community theatre, which operates out of a small parish hall in the neighbourhood church. Alfie’s passengers are also his performers: amateur thespians that come to see the magic the theatre offers through Alfie’s eyes.
They inhabit the world of working-class Dublin in the 1960s, a world where the budding sexual freedom happening in other places is barely whispered about.
Ben De Wynter directs a cast that includes Oliver Award-winner Paul Clarkson as Alfie Byrne, Róisín Sullivan, Anthony Cable, Dieter Thomas, Paul Monaghan, Jamie Honeybourne, A.J O’Neill, Joanna Nevin, Ruth Berkeley, Kimberly Ensor, Emily Juler, Nicola Redman, Niall Sheehy, Daniel Maguire, Patrick Joseph Kelliher, Barra Collins and Adam Davenport.
A Regan De Wynter production, A Man of No Importance is designed by James Turner, with choreography by Phyllida Crowley-Smith and musical direction by Christopher Peake.