I went to see Serious Money last night at The Lir, with the cool kids from Malaprop Theatre, who sometimes let me eat lunch with them.  It was sexy and great and full of good jokes, fake cocaine and hard, hard rhyming. Director Oonagh Murphy did an amazing job with a tough play about the insider-trading, the financial madness of the nineteen eighties, and murder, which is inhibited by a clunk-a-dunk-a-dunk rhyming format that is, truly, annoying as *&%$ (trying not to swear is my new thing, I now say astreix-ampersand-percent-dollar and other whimsies). I can’t imagine how hard this script was to direct, knowing how good Oonagh is at directing in general, and yet still how tough dem words falls on your ears sometimes, but hey! Caryl Churchill can do what she likes, which she always does, which is why we love her.

But the show closed last night, so no point writing about how nice it was, and how satisfying that choreographed number in the middle was (right?) because you won’t see it.  Instead, let’s shout out to Molly O’Cathain, who designed this sexy beast of a show (and I’ve got picture evidence to prove it!)

Molly is the one below, second from the left, beside an older version of me from when I was trying to dress like a respectable citizen, had short hair and no tattoos on my hands.

Molly is an incredible theatre and set designer and the resident in house beauty-maker for Super Paua, (and for Malaprop, hence the group outing).  She’ll be a key collaborator for our forthcoming Pathways to Production Project.  Check out her Insta here and her website here for more example of her visually glorious creations.

We’re embarking on a couple of cool projects together this year, including one called Knapsack (more about that later) which is going to be design-led and devised, and explores packing bags and running away from home. It’s going to be an apocalyptic and fanciful and survivalist show-in-a-bag (literally) and we’re doing some development work with Branar in Galway this December for it. Can’t wait. BRING YOUR BUNKER ON YOUR BACK!

Anyway, as there’s very little point to the ‘My Friends Are Cooler Than Your Friends‘ blog format other than bigging up other creatives I know, I’ll leave it there, having passed on those tasty pictures and a whole bunch of links to Molly’s work.

Oh, and also a shout out to Elöise Stevenson, pictured below, who I have never met and do not know at all.  She absolutely stole the show during Serious Money.  Her performance comprised about 35% of what I liked about the play (Molly’s design get’s another 35% – the remaining percents are floating in space).

Slay, Cilla, slay.

(All Serious Money Photos are Keith Dixon photography)

S x