Dungarvan Dramatic Club served up an old-fashioned, almost innocent, comedy, The Last of The Last of The Mohicans in the Town Hall Theatre, Dungarvan. This was a well-structured one-act, divided by the Club into two forty minute sections with an interval.
The direction by Mary Kelly was true to the authors intention and a fine set gave reality to a most charming nights entertainment with lots of laughter and genuine fun. It was sexy in the best possible way and never risqué. The nearest it came to rude was a joke that the errant and cuckolded pilot was an expert in the martial art of Foo King.
This was a value for money story of a philandering husband, Dominick played with a light touch by a talented Ruaidhri De Paor who packs off his innocent wife to a crawthumping pilgrimage to an obscure saints shrine while he prepares to make an adulterous night in the family home with a curvaceous and sexy Grace Lamb who was as cute as pigtailed-blondes were in the daft seventies. Grace’s pilot husband is supposedly strike-bound in London.
Through one of those show business contrivances, Grace is in panto as Robin Hood, complete with short green skirt and green Aer Lingus tights and she is accompanied to the house by Finbar, also in panto garb, as one of those stereotypical gays in a sequined jacket, more mince than prime fillet. It is to actor (Con O’Sullivan’s credit that he raised this character up into a fine comic performance that was never limp-wristed or tacky.
Morgan O’Carroll was the pilot who returned too quickly to add a delicious cameo to the confusion. Caroline O’Connor was great as the scatty wife, Ita, but Emma Walsh was indeed sexy and excellent as the sweet cutie who oozes comedy and occasions of sin, as Grace.
Dave Lee provided a telling soundtrack for a most charming evening of gentle comedy and fun.
