UNITED KINGDOM: COMEDY "STONE IN THEIR POCKETS" OPENS IN LONDON'S WEST END ABOUT A HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER BEING FILMED IN IRELAND

Record ID: 389476

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: COMEDY "STONE IN THEIR POCKETS" OPENS IN LONDON'S WEST END ABOUT A HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER BEING FILMED IN IRELAND
  • Date: 23rd May 2000
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 7th June 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UK
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Arts,General
  • Reuters ID: LVACVR6TDKTMNQV1XDVO4A0BLYMQ
  • Story Text: Take a holiday in Ireland these days and chances are you'll be tripping over the film crews. The Emerald Isle is enjoying unprecedented popularity with film-makers now - with it's unspoilt landscapes - and dreamy villages. Indeed it's a running joke that everybody in Ireland has appeared as an extra in a movie - either in Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' where Ireland's County Wexford stood in for Normandy - or even Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart' - where County Kildare stood duty for the Scottish highlands and the Irish Army was put at Mr.
    Gibson's disposal. But what happens to those extras when the Hollywood crews pack up and go home? That's the subject matter for a new black comedy play "Stones in his Pockets" - now playing the board's in London's West End.
    Actors Sean Campion and Conleth Hill have not yet lost their sense of direction in this niftily performed two-hander.
    Fast pace, slick changes of accent and body language and a maze of exits and entrances characterize this new play by Irish playwright Marie Jones.
    "Stones in His Pockets" is about Charlie and Jake, a couple of rural fellas in County Kerry who work as extras on a big screen movie.
    Charlie is keen to write his own blockbuster script, while Jake can't believe his luck when Hollywood glamourpuss Caroline Giovanni suggests he comes back to her hotel.
    But the harder truth, out of shot, is that the locals must fight their overbearing English director to get an afternoon off to bury a farm lad who has drowned himself with stones in his pockets, despairing of a bright future.
    It was the culture clash of these two worlds that inspired Marie Jones to write the play.
    "I'd worked in a lot of movies and I was very curious when you move into, which is what a lot of them do in Ireland, because the scene is very beautiful, move into very small towns and villages and people in the towns and villages have all been used as extras in the movies... as to how it affected people after the event when everything moved out because it was so different and how these two different worlds have to exist together for that short period of time.
    "The idea of having two people comes from having no money in the theatre and it's very difficult to get a play put on if you've got more than 5 or 6 people so we thought well why not 2 as opposed to 10 or 20 because it's too difficult.
    So it was economics really."
    And economics played a role all the way through.
    Not only did Sean and Conleth study all 16 characters, they did it in only three weeks. An amazing achievement.
    "I found these two actors in alleyway in Belfast one night and they were drunk and I thought I better get them something to do...no, they're wonderful actors, I'd worked with them before. In Ireland all the actors know each other and there are times when we'd all worked together, they were just absolutely perfect for the part, they're so versatile, commedians, they're wonderful."
    "I found these two actors in alleyway in Belfast one night and they were drunk and I thought I better get them something to do...no, they're wonderful actors, I'd worked with them before. In Ireland all the actors know each other and there are times when we'd all worked together, they were just absolutely perfect for the part, they're so versatile, commedians, they're wonderful."
    "As an actor it's great fun, first and foremost to get a chance to play the 7 or 8 characters each that we play, men, women, old, young. If you're not worth your salt at all, it's the sort of thing you're always chasing as an actor, because if nothing else it gets to show off some vesatility that you might have I mean it's great fun from that point of view."
    Sean and Conleth first met in rehearsals for Northern Star at the 1998 Belfast Festival, but it seems as though they have been inseparable from the year dot.
    They genuinely enjoy each other's company, which is just as well, since, with runs in London, Canada and the US in the offing, they could be spending the best part of the next year in very close proximity.
    "Stones in his Pockets" is a black commedy. For all the laughter, there's some seriousness: "There was a time in Ireland in fact still in the Ireland of today, there's been a lot of young men under 25 committing suicide, it's a real disintegration of the rural community, agriculture is no longer there, it's diminishing and there was a spade of suicides and young lads going into the water to drown but filling their pockets full of stones. I know it sounds very black and dark but in the play it's about one young guy whose head is completely gone in drugs and whatever and is completely enthralled by this fantasy world of movies."
    It might be hard to have a favourite character in this play, but both Sean and Conleth stick to the two main guys Charlie and Jake.
    "Definitely Jake and Charlie I think. The two main characters because it's their story. Even when we were rehearsing this, we made sure that we had Jake and Charlie's story before we even thought about any of the other characters. They're the lynchpin for the whole piece. The others can be great fun, I mean Caroline and Micky and all of that, I mean it's great fun but they're only flitting in and out again whereas the two boys are there all the time."
    All in all "Stones in his Pockets " is a feel-good play.
    The extras become the stars and the stars the extras.
    "There's a real feel-good factor to the play because it's about people who have no power taking control eventually, having no choice but to take power into their own hands and I think that's what the feel good is, the actors become in charge of their own destiny", says mary Jones.
    "Stones in his Pockets" is running at the Ambassador's Theatre in London's West End.
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