Aoife Boyce and Orla Mullan star in the Balor Reps production of Long Gone Lonesome Cowgirls.
BY SEÁN P. FEENY
IN WHAT is their very first outing for the Balor Reps, two young actors will be bringing you Long Gone Lonesome Cowgirls to the Balor Arts Centre at the end of the month.
Long Gone Lonesome Cowgirls is bittersweet comedy with razor sharp dialogue and shades of Thelma and Louise as submissive housewife Vicki and brash, lusty barmaid Rae strike up an unlikely friendship through their shared love of Hank Williams.
Vicki is a straight-laced housewife and conforming Catholic forever waiting for her itinerant bulldozer driving husband to come home. Into her small town world comes Rae – a free spirited, loose moraled, hard-living barmaid – abandoned on the roadside by her rodeo-riding husband of just 5 weeks.
Over the course of the next three years they help each other through love, heartbreak, divorces, births and friendship to a soundtrack of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash.
Orla Mullen and Aoife Boyce are in the leading roles as the Balor Arts Centre and Donegal Bay & Bluestacks Festival present the first ever Irish performance of the play On Thursday, August 30 and Friday, August 31 in Ballybofey.
Orla said: “The play is set in the small country town of Sturt in the Australian outback and follows the unlikely friendship of Vicki and Rae, two women from very different backgrounds who are brought together by circumstance and their passionate love of country music.
“Over the period of three years, the play follows their lives, loves, heartbreaks and primarily focuses on their complex friendship but also touches on greater issues affecting them like the political effects of American globalisation and the Vietnam war.
“It’s an incredibly funny script with some great country music cleverly intertwined into the plot. Audiences of all ages can expect a lot of laughs, many familiar country tunes and an enjoyable and heartwarming insight into the lives of these two lonesome cowgirls.
Aoife added: “The script is great-it is not often you would see such a good script being written for women. When Orla and myself had our first read-through with our director Kieran and backstage manager J.C., we were rolling about the office laughing. It might be advisable to state that there is bad language in the show-please do not be offended if you come to see us.”