One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest returns to Mullingar Arts Centre next month

Sarah Slevin

Mullingar Theatre Lab, are wrapping their run of their award-winning show, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ this July.

From Wednesday 20 July to Saturday 23 July, the local group will perform the last four shows of the production.

Founder of the group, Alan Conroy, has encouraged locals to come and see the production for the last time.

“It’s a crowd-pleaser for sure. There’s great dynamics and humour in the play, it has it all really,” Alan said.

Alan explained how the run of the show has been unintentionally extended due to the impact of Covid-19 over the past few years.

“Because of Covid, the whole thing has been dragged out, so these are our last performances now. That’s it then, it’s a wonderful play, but we haven’t been able to tackle anything else because of restrictions so we want to move on,” Alan said.

“We have performed the play in several venues throughout Ireland during the last few years intermittently because of Covid,” Alan said.

Once they have finished with this production, Alan said they hope to run a pub festival throughout Mullingar.

“We hope to do pub theatre, which would involve light entertainment like sketches, short bits and try to involve as many people as we can. No set or costumes, it’s all about being creative and interactive,” Alan said.

The Mullingar group have enjoyed success at a recent festival, bringing home five awards at the Rush Drama Festival in Dublin.

The group took home awards for stage management (Marie Brennan), best actor (Alan Conroy), best actress (Fionnuala Conroy), best director (Dan E Hyland) and overall best play with ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.

Mullingar Theatre Lab was set up over eight years ago by Alan Conroy and it has amassed up to 40 members now.

“I formed the group about eight years ago, and we’ve done a good few plays since and we had quite a lot of success in the drama circuit of Ireland in our first year at it,” Alan said.

The group also reached an All-Ireland final in 2019 with their production of Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Lonesome West’ at the drama circuit run by the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland.

Tickets for Mullingar Theatre Lab’s production of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ can be got online at mullingarartscentre.ie/ or by phoning the box office on 044 934 7777.