From the
BAM web site:
A trip around the world via storytelling at its most effortlessly fluent, 17 Border Crossings starts with a man at a desk on an empty stage and ends up everywhere but. The itinerary: a worse-for-wear Communist-era train traveling from Prague to Belgrade, the wheel well of a transatlantic jet to Heathrow, and 15 other border crossings recreated with magnetic, offhanded charm by theater director, designer, and raconteur Thaddeus Phillips (Red-Eye to Havre de Grace). A chair, table, and bar of lights become the imagined settings for invasive body searches at Charles de Gaulle, ayahuasca experiments in the Amazon, KFC-smuggling in Palestine, and run-ins with Ace of Base on Croatian ferries in this engrossing look at the perplexing ins and outs of our fragile right of passage.
From the
review in The Guardian:
This is an elegant piece of storytelling spanning more than 20 years and many borders all over the world. Some of these borders have since disappeared. He tells a story about taking a ferry from Italy to the former Yugoslavia and finding himself stranded in a war zone; another about a train journey in which a mysterious man throws packages from the moving carriage into the apparent wilderness; and gives an explanation of how to order a takeaway in Gaza (apparently, it’s delivered by small boys running through tunnels to circumvent border controls). There are contrasts: passing through tight security to leave Israel, and walking almost unnoticed into Jordan.
From the NYT's:
Played by Ms. Hulme-Beaman with the full-body expressiveness of a small child, Madeleine is clever, awkward, awfully lonely and terribly funny, too. On the farm where she lives with her brother and grandfather, the chickens are her closest confidants.
“I would talk to the chickens about everything — about Johnno, being a lady and the fearful passage of love that stood before me,” she tells us, majestic with the drama of her imagined romance.
Picture of innocence, right?
Hardly. Tightly wound, easily piqued, her humiliation quick to turn to fury, Madeleine is a bit of a sociopath. She really shouldn’t be left alone with animals. (Um, chickens? Watch out.)
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/theater/review-pondling-looks-deep-into-the-heart-of-a-disturbed-child.html?referer=
From the NYT's:
Larry (Mr. O’Kelly) is robbing a rural Irish convent of a Virgin Mary statue (memorably played by Ms. Fox) when he first encounters Sister Martha (also Ms. Fox). A teacher just back from Nigeria, she is transporting a roll of film that one of her students implored her to deliver to a man in Ireland.
In something of a throwback, photos on film figure heavily in the plot, which has to do with an oil company’s rapacious ways and various hired thugs. When corporate bad guys show up at the convent in search of the film, Larry swoops in and saves Sister Martha. Off they drive.
…
“Little Thing, Big Thing” seems, for a while, to be a bit of a shaggy-dog tale. Not so. A play about goodness, guilt and the willingness to get away with anything, it has an ending that will stop you short, right before it makes you think.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/theater/review-in-little-thing-big-thing-a-nun-a-criminal-and-a-social-conscience.html?referer=&_r=0
From the
59E59 web site:
LITTLE THING, BIG THING
By DONAL O'KELLY
Directed by JIM CULLETON
With SORCHA FOX and DONAL O'KELLY
The infamous Scarab Oil Company is looking to expand its operations
In Nigeria, a frightened child tells Sister Martha her dying father's request. "Take this old film roll and bring it to Henry Barr in Ireland. Trust no one."Back in Ireland, the film Martha is carrying attracts the urgent interests of some very powerful and dangerous people.
Meanwhile, "ex-con" Larry's plans to rob a convent are interrupted when he inadvertently joins Martha on the run. The ensuing chase thrusts them into the world of international oil skullduggery, awakening passions they thought were dead.
This darkly comic thriller from Fringe First winners Fishamble and Donal O'Kelly is "an enjoyable fast paced play that never lets you catch your breath." (No More Workhorse, Ireland)
"DIRECTOR JIM CULLETON'S ENJOYABLE PRODUCTION CAN EFFECTIVELY DO NO WRONG...O'KELLY FINNESSES THIS DECEPTIVELY BREEZY, CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED STORY WITH HIS SIGNATURE IMAGISTIC, ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACH TO LANGUAGE...FOX AND O'KELLY'S WINNING DOUBLE ACT...A LITTLE SUBVERSIVE, BUT THAT EFFECT CAN BE BIG ENOUGH."
-Irish Times ★★★★
"IMPECCABLE... IT HAS AN ENDING THAT WILL STOP YOU SHORT"-The New York Times
"LITTLE THING, BIG THING GRABS HOLD AT THE START AND NEVER LETS GO, A REAL TREAT!"-Talkin� Broadway"ENERGETIC, NONSTOP PERFORMANCES... DELIGHTFUL TO WATCH!"-TheaterMania
Supported by Culture Ireland.
Part of 1st Irish Festival.
