Kilbeggan Players return with Noel Coward comedy

After a lengthy break, the Kilbeggan Players return with a production of Noel Coward’s three act comedy, Blithe Spirit. They are busy rehearsing for performances on Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29, at 7pm in St James’s Hall, Kilbeggan.

Twenty-three-year-old Seoidín Rochford, a local drama and theatre graduate of UCG, is producing and directing the play.

A small group came together last September to explore the possibility of reviving the once vibrant Kilbeggan Players. “I am told they used to be big, and I tried to find out when their last production was, but all I know is it was before I was born,” Seoidín said. However, she pointed out that a lot of people travel to other areas to plays, so there is local interest.

In her third year at college, during Covid, students were asked to pick a playwright to explore, and she chose Noel Coward because she was not familiar with him. When she was approached about directing a play by Kilbeggan Players, and because most of the available cast were female, she decided that Blithe Spirit would be suitable.

“We have all females, bar two men. You tend to see other local drama groups doing old Irish plays and comedies with largely male casts. I felt we should do something different, and because we had a lot of women actors, Blithe Spirit suited,” Seoidín said.

Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in 1941, during WWI, to help lift spirits and distract from the dark reality of war. A medium holds a séance for a man suffering writer’s block, but things go horribly wrong when the spirit of the writer’s dead wife is called up.

After that, chaos reigns. “It’s a difficult play to stage and to act,” Seoidín acknowledged. “Set in the late 1930s, early ‘40s in Kent, there is the old English language and then there is the challenge and nature of the play and keeping the illusion is difficult,” she said.

Seoidín is “loving every minute” and is “getting to do a lot of things in one setting” because the group is small in numbers and in budget. “I am learning so much as we go along,” she said. The group began rehearsals just before Christmas and “got really into it since then”.

The plan is to stage the production for two nights in Kilbeggan and “see how it goes”. They may not take the play to other venues this year, but Seoidin said it is something they will consider in the future.

“This year is about establishing a group of people that will continue to be involved and maybe others will be encouraged to get involved,” Seoidín remarked.