Press Release:
Girls and Dolls is the stunning debut play from the Writer/Producer of the hit Channel Four comedy series, Derry Girls, Lisa McGee. This brand new production by Millennium Forum Productions and Sodabread Theatre Company performs at the Millennium Forum from Monday 17th to Thursday 20th September as part of an Irish Tour.
Starring Jamie Lee O’Donnell (Derry Girls) and Jennifer Barry (The Young Offenders), this production is hot on the heels of the massive success of both hit comedy series and is guaranteed to be the hottest ticket in town!
Writer, Lisa McGee is looking forward to seeing this new production of her play: “Girls and Dolls tells the story of two ten year old girls, Emma and Clare, who meet on an unusually hot Summers day in the 1980’s. It will be a brief friendship, but one which will cast a shadow over them for the rest of their lives. Set in Derry, in the same colourful neighbourhood that my sitcom Derry Girls takes place, Emma and Clare guide us through their world, it’s larger than life characters and the sectarian tension they don’t fully understand. When I wrote Girls and Dolls back in 2006, I wanted to write about memory, about how two people may view the same event completely differently, and to ask the question, can we ever really escape our past? As Emma and Clare tell the story of that summer, they struggle to understand what they did, what they became, and how they were judged. I’m very excited about this new production. Jamie –Lee and Jennifer are huge talents and the Millennium Forum are to be applauded for such stellar casting. I can’t wait to see them in action.”
‘As long as it looks okay, it doesn’t matter if it’s broken.’
Can best friends really last forever?
Derry, 1980. Emma and Clare are thick as thieves – skipping, chasing, playing in the park. But the terrible and harrowing events of that summer would tear their lives apart, binding them together forever. As adults they obsessively replay past events and incidents. Could anything have been done to change them?
For Emma and Clare it was the summer they met at the swings, the summer they built a tree house and the summer a young mother and her infant daughter moved into number fourteen. Now in their thirties, Emma and Clare struggle to come to terms with the chain of devastating events that began that summer. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Girls and Dolls performs at the Millennium Forum from Monday 17th to Thursday 20th September. Tickets are now on sale from the Box Office. Telephone 02871 264455 or visit www.millenniumforum.co.uk for bookings. NB suitable for ages 16+
GMcC
North West Culture Gal 