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...

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...

Over the weekend I got my Christmas present from my wife... No, it's not that the post is particularly bad here... it's because my Christmas present was a ticket to see Martin Lynch's adaptation of "Over the Bridge" by Sam Thompson, at the Waterfront Studio. This was a romantic gesture on her part, in that it was after the opening night of a production of the same play which I directed as a student in Edinburgh back in 1987, that she and I started going out together. I believe my opening gambit with her was "Do you fancy dandering down to the Scotsman with me?" as I was going down to pick up the reviews from the local paper... The reviews were middling, which sent me into a slough of despond, but she sought to pick me up, and so began a long and happy relationship... So this play is important to me... but not just for personal, sentimental reasons. Also because I think it is one of the most important pieces of theatre ever to be written and staged in Nor...