Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival present, on stage in Galway and Dublin this summer, Colm Meaney and Brenda Meaney in a major new revival of 'Bedbound' by Enda Walsh, directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull! Read more about this very exciting announcement here...
Enda Walsh’s savagely funny play - a sensation in Dublin, London and New York - gets a major revival at this year's Galway International Arts Festival and will star Colm Meaney and Brenda Meaney! Book your tickets now as they are sure to be incredibly popular this summer.
14-29 Jul | Galway International Arts Festival - Tickets on sale from Thurs 20 April
08-12 Aug | 3Olympia Theatre - Tickets on sale Fri 28 April
I give in ta the words. I let go. Go.
Father and Daughter are bound, inextricably, to each other. And the walls are closing in. He talks frantically about his extraordinary past in furniture sales; she talks no less compulsively about anything at all, to fill the terrible silence in her head.
Colm Meaney - whose recent stage performances include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the West End and The Iceman Cometh on Broadway - returns to the Irish stage for the first time in over 40 years, to play the once-flamboyant furniture salesman. Brenda Meaney plays his daughter, confined to a small bed.
What would happen if the torrent of words … just stopped?
Directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull, the stellar creative team also includes Jamie Vartan (set and costume), Sinéad McKenna (lighting) and Sinéad Diskin (sound).
"a genuine and bracing original … a whiskey shot of a play" - New York Times
"a play unlike any other I have seen ... an uncomfortable, unforgettable tour-de-force" - Daily Telegraph.
Colm Meaney said; "My daughter Brenda brought the play Bedbound to me earlier this year with a view to us doing it together. I was in no mood for doing a play having recently done The Iceman Cometh and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Two epics and very hard work! I made the mistake of reading Bedbound and was immediately swept away by the power and brilliance of the language and fascinated by these two extraordinary characters. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t resist! To get to work on this wonderful play with Enda and Marc and the great team at Landmark and Galway International Arts Festival is truly exciting and a real privilege."
Brenda Meaney said; "I've been a fan of Enda Walsh's work since I was struck by a student production of Disco Pigs at Players in my first year of college at Trinity. To have the opportunity now to work with his incomparable language, and the inspiringly dark world of Bedbound, is an absolute dream, a thrilling, complex, terrifying dream. The added boon of working with my dad - our first play together - is above and beyond what any actor could ask for: challenging, exciting, wonderful. It feels like a homecoming and a new chapter all at once."
"I also have to say how in awe I am of the creative team - I feel so privileged to work with Marc Atkinson Borrull again, and to collaborate with this incredible group of artists whose work I have admired for so long. I couldn't imagine a more dynamic, inspiring group to delve into this world with."
Enda Walsh said; "I’m absolutely delighted that Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival are taking on Bedbound. One of the most personal and ferocious plays I’ve written, Bedbound takes an idea of my upbringing and completely twists and abstracts it. The very best to the director Marc Atkinson Borrull and the other creatives - and Colm Meaney and Brenda Meaney. So looking forward to it."
Producers Anne Clarke and Paul Fahy said: "Bedbound is the latest in a series of significant productions of Enda Walsh’s plays from Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival, which have toured widely internationally - including Misterman, starring Cillian Murphy (to be seen later this year on National Theatre at Home), and the world premieres of Medicine, Arlington and Ballyturk. We are thrilled to be bringing Colm Meaney back to the Irish stage, for the first time in over 40 years, in this explosive two-hander with his daughter Brenda Meaney."
Landmark Productions
Landmark Productions is one of Ireland’s leading theatre producers. It produces wide-ranging work in Ireland and shares that work with international audiences.
Led by Anne Clarke since the company’s foundation in 2003, its productions have received multiple awards and have been seen in leading theatres in London, New York and beyond. It produces a wide range of ambitious work – plays, operas and musicals – in theatres of all scales. It co-produces regularly with a number of partners, including, most significantly, Galway International Arts Festival and Irish National Opera. Its 27 world premieres include new plays by major Irish writers such as Enda Walsh, Mark O’Rowe and Deirdre Kinahan, featuring a roll-call of Ireland’s finest actors, directors and designers.
Numerous awards include the Judges’ Special Award at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards, in recognition of ‘sustained excellence in programming and for developing imaginative partnerships to bring quality theatre to the Irish and international stage’; and a Special Tribute Award for Anne Clarke, for her work as ‘a producer of world-class theatre in the independent sector in Ireland’.
In January 2021 it established Landmark Live, a new online streaming platform which enables it to bring the thrill of live theatre to audiences around the world.
Find out more via their website landmarkproductions.ie or by following Landmark Productions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Galway International Arts Festival
Galway International Arts Festival is a major cultural organisation, which produces one of Europe’s leading international arts festivals; develops and produces new work that tours nationally and internationally; and presents a major discussion platform, First Thought Talks. The Festival takes place each July in Galway, Ireland with attendances in excess of 300,000.
The Festival tours its own productions and exhibitions nationally and internationally, and with its co–producing partners has recently toured to London, New York, Edinburgh, Chicago, Washington, Adelaide and Sydney.
The Festival commissioned and produced John Gerrard’s Mirror Pavilion during Galway European Capital of Culture 2020 which following its premiere in Galway toured to the Gwanjgu Biennale, South Korea 2021 and Sydney Biennale Spring 2022.
Other notable productions include Misterman, Ballyturk [Best Production at the Irish Theatre Awards] and Arlington and Medicine [Galway, Edinburgh Festival, New York 2021] all by Enda Walsh [all co–produced with Landmark Productions]; and Incantata by Paul Muldoon which toured to New York in 2020. The Festival’s productions of the immersive theatre installation series Rooms, created by Enda Walsh and Paul Fahy, most recently toured to the Barbican, having previously toured to New York and Washington.
The programme for Galway International Arts Festival 2023 will be announced on 16th May.
The Festival’s CEO is John Crumlish and its Artistic Director is Paul Fahy.
Galway International Arts Festival would like to acknowledge the support of its principal funding agencies the Arts Council and Fáilte Ireland; its Drinks Partner Heineken; and Education Partner University of Galway.
Find out more about Galway International Arts Festival via their website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Feature Photo by Rich Gilligan
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