Heroes With Their Hands in the Air

So I got the group together to go see Heroes With Their Hands in the Air last night. I thought it came together quite well.

The play ran 90 minutes with no intermission, which turned out to be just about the perfect length. It did what I think Finton (the director) wanted it to do without dragging on at any point. Seeing it all put together from start to finish was pretty powerful. Even though I'd seen almost all of it during rehersals, I found the finished product really moving. There was one point where I almost cried.

They had one last-minute actor substitution due to illness, but he grabbed the ball and ran with it. Aside from one line (from a London taxicab driver) that no one can do better than the original actor, he did a fabulous job.

From a techie standpoint (do costume designers count as techies? backstagers at least), I have to say that the set was pretty awesome. They had a black and white map of the bogside of the floor and another one on the backdrop, along with a seperate backdrop made up of headlines, quotes, articles, and transcript exerpts. Afterwards, a few of us went up and examined it more closely. One of my groupmates was brave enough to walk right up onto the stage to get a better look of the backdrop, but no one shoed him away, so I guess it was alright. I think he was trying to read something. The stage is level with the first row of seats, so it's not that big a deal to walk right up to the set.

It's going to Belfast and Doublin after it closes here. Really good stuff.