Virtual Methodist

The first thing I heard as I woke up this morning was that the playwright Sam Thompson was being honoured by naming the new bridge from Victoria Park over to Airport Road after him. This bridge allows access by foot and bike to the Harbour Estate and Titanic Quarter, the erstwhile Shipyard where his most famous play "Over the Bridge" was set...  There is a certain appropriateness to this, but also some irony given that many of the issues that Sam Thompson raised in that play apply directly to the malaise affecting the loyalist community that lies in the shadow of the gantries of the remaining 2 shipyard cranes. To that end I offer this slightly revised reblog of one I produced in the wake of Martin Lynch's revival/revision of the play 3 years ago, looking at why I believe it is a crucially important play : The Physical Context - The Shipyard In a moment of unguarded honesty a few years ago, when Harland and Wolff was teetering on the brink of total closure...

It is fast approaching the centenary of the Titanic's departure from Belfast and its all too sudden sinking, and it is all over the TV, with ITV's dreadful costume drama (dubbed "Drownton Abbey" by one friend, and "Upstairs Drownstairs" by another) and the BBC doing a documentary about it with Len Goodman from Strictly Come Dancing... Is he going to do a quickstep on Queens Island?  And everywhere you look in Belfast at the moment some Titanic-themed event is taking place, with yesterday's dedication of the "Titanica" statue , outside the Titanic Signature Building, which is due to be opened on Saturday coming (and which I am looking forward to visiting as soon as possible thereafter), and today's ludicrous renaming of "Bridge End Halt" as "Titanic Quarter" even though it's a good mile walk from the heart of that particular developers' dream... Although it remains the only direct link between the Titani...

Well, I did promise... although with the passage of time and other intervening events I do wonder why... But given that I've recently posted on another play that touches on some of the issues that face working class Northern Ireland, and particularly the protestant part of it, I thought I should return to look at Sam Thompson's "Over the Bridge." I've already foisted an outrageously long post on you, dissecting Martin Lynch's recent adaptation of it, but I thought it might also be useful to look at some of the reasons why it is, in my not so humble opinion, one of the most important modern Irish plays... There are a number of reasons: The Physical Context - The Shipyard In a moment of unguarded honesty a few years ago, when Harland and Wolff was teetering on the brink of total closure, a political representative with responsibilities for trade and industry said that the shipyard was a dreadful place... Full of asbestos and other noxious substances tha...