12 Angry Kilcoole Kids

To look at them, you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt, but, by the end of the month, these Kilcoole kids are going to be screaming blue murder at one another.

For three days. At 7.30pm. In The Castle Inn Theatre.

Yep, the Coláiste Chraobh Abhann Players are taking on the solid gold theatre classic 12 Angry Men, and, well, they couldn’t be happier about it.

Maybe it’s just because they’ll each get a chance to unleash all that teenage rage they harbour against this cruel world, on the stage, at full blast, in front of a cowering crowd, but, it’s probably more than that. This is about getting deep into the wool of a drama that rips at the very social fabric of good and evil, our notions of right and wrong,  and at how we decide where that thin blue line cuts through all the facts, figures, forensics, feelings and phoniness.

Having debuted as a teleplay in 1954, Reginald Rose’s powerful drama follows a jury argue out the finer points and grand gestures of a murder case, their arguments revealing as much about the case as it does about one another. Hitting the stage a year later, it was Sydney Lumet’s towering 1957 film adaptation – co-produced by star Henry Fonda and Rose – that cemented 12 Angry Men as a modern standard.

Over the years, it’s been adapted and adored by generation after generation, being produced as 12 Angry Jurors, 12 Angry Men & Women, and 12 Angry Women, whilst a 2003 London production, led by Bill Bailey, was cast entirely with comedians. For some strange reason.

For the Coláiste Chraobh Abhann Players’ production, the cast is pretty evenly split between male and female, with the 12 jurors played by Rachel Crimes, Yvonne Kavanagh, Reme Atiyota, Marc Brady, Glenda Tigirigi, Matthew Byrne, Ciarán Fox, Ódhran Wall, Colm Flynn, Erika Bellamy, Lars Schwarz and Lucien Aurich, whilst Ryan Noranha Bennan plays the guard, Patrick Doyle is the accused, Jenitta Jimmy the lawyer and Natalia Winkel plays the judge.

Their 12 Angry Jurors takes over The Castle Inn Theatre in Newcastle from Tuesday, April 24th to Thursday, April 26th, running at 7.30pm each night. Admission is a mere €5, and you can grab your tickets by calling 012870198.

In the meantime, we swung over to Coláiste Chraobh Abhann this afternoon to catch the kids in rehearsal, along with their director, Seán Ó Súilleabháin, to see how all that anger management was working out…