'Wake of Yer Man' sells out in Jersey ahead of home run

Five actors from Westmeath have been enlisted to join the Jersey team that is preparing for the St Patrick’s weekend launch of Rochfortbridge playwright Yvonne Heavey’s tragicomedy, The Wake of Yer Man.

But if you were hoping to be among the audience for the two-night Jersey run, you’ve left it too late: the entire 500 seats have been booked out.

“It’s completely sold out,” Yvonne said. “I can’t even ask for any more sponsorship here because I can’t give anyone a ticket.”

The theatre in Jersey has declared it has never had a new play by an unknown playwright sell out so quickly.

The good news is that the play is booked in for Mullingar Arts Centre in May.

While it is a debut play, Yvonne has been gaining quite a profile as a writer, having won a number of literary awards, and published The Wake of Yer Ma, a semi-autobiographical set of short stories set in rural Ireland during the 1990s, drawing from her experiences growing up in Derrygreenagh Park.

It's on the framework created by that 11-story collection that the play stands, leaning in to the relationship between Rochfortbridge and the nearby Bord na Móna works which provided the sort of good steady employment that shaped life in the town, and especially Derrygreenagh. More so than in the book, the stage version pushes comedy to the fore.

“The stories were really used for a sense of place,” she explained.

“The characters are developed further, slightly fictionalised, but the wake is the prime factor – how we as Irish people see a wake, the dialogue, the humour, the community.”

From the start, it’s been important to Yvonne that the play would be authentic, and she has obsessed about the need to have the script spoken in the accent of the midlands, which is how it has come about that five ‘natives’, all of whom cut their teeth at the arts centre in Mullingar, are now on board.

“So much of the humour is in the turn of phrase, especially with Irish women,” she said. “We needed Irish accents on stage. We absolutely needed them.”

The director, Daniel Egerton, is from this area also, and Seán Lynch, director of Mullingar Arts Centre, is also involved in the production.

So far, due to the geographic and consequent cost implications, the cast have not yet all been in the same room at the same time, let alone the same country.

That will all happen closer to the date that the play opens in Jersey. In the interim, rehearsals have been taking place across borders, and weekly Zoom sessions are bringing together cast members from different countries.

“They meet every Tuesday,” she said. “The rapport they’ve built is unbelievable. It really is.”

There is considerable expense involved in bringing the show to the stage, particularly given the fact that the Irish cast members will have to be flown to Jersey and accommodated there, and the Jersey actors will later have to travel to Mullingar.

As a result, Yvonne has been reaching out to local firms in the hope of securing some sponsorship to help cover the costs.

She has had some success already, but hopes that there will be support from some other sources.

“In Ireland at least, I can offer tickets,” she said. “Even a couple of hundred euro here and there helps – it all goes towards feeding the cast and getting them here.”

• If anyone is interested in providing some sponsorship, Yvonne can be contacted at yvonne.heavey4@gmail.com.