Ballinrobe Musical society won the much sought after AIMS Best Overall Show Award with a stunning production of The Pirate Queen and this year they turned their attention to Peter Kennedy, their director of thirteen years. They gave his revised premiere of Come The Dawn a technical production that you would not see on the professional stage.
In a stunning, emotional, sledge hammer of a second act, the brought the conflict of pre-Treaty Belfast to painful life in a Community School auditorium. A helicopter descended from the roof (no fly floor here) that would put Miss Saigon to shame. It had two passengers, a lighted control panel, a functioning door and a roaring realistic sound and fumes. In a twenty-minute period, there were four onstage shootings and at times it looked like Martin McDonagh meets Midsomer Murders.
