Aisling Curtis | Senior Staff Writer
The play “Boys and Girls”, written and produced by students of Trinity College Dublin, is set to be performed at the First Irish Theatre Festival in New York this September. The play has received praise for its honesty and humour; the Irish Times’ Peter Crawley described it as a “stunning Dublin hymn”, replete with “brave new writing” and delivered with “sensational flow”.
Boys and Girls doesn’t claim to break intellectual barriers: it’s a play about four Dublin students on an average night out, navigating the standards, prejudices and trials that being part of the young generation entails. But it transcends such banal concerns through the use of clever and memorable verse, a unique feature that has been described by Crawley as “pure poetry”.
Written by Senior Sophister music student Dylan Coburn Gray, Boys and Girls was conceieved two years ago but only appeared onstage at Players this year. Ronan Carey, Maeve O’Mahony, Claire O’Reilly and Sean Doyle play the four main characters. Following their appearance in Players, they performed the play at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2013 to widespread acclaim; and again in May at the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar. However, their biggest break has come with the chance to perform the play at the East59East theatre in New York, where it will join other acclaimed Irish plays for the First Irish Theatre Festival.
Speaking to The University Times, Carey revealed the absolute bewilderment felt by the cast at the play’s success. “The true enormity of the situation probably isn’t going to sink in until some time next year,” he said. “We’ll look back and think ‘Wow, yeah, we actually did that’”. As well as appearing onstage, Boys and Girls was also featured on the RTÉ documentary “Generation Sex” in March. Carey explains that this was presumably due to the play’s appeal to the young generation; it is “unequivocally and unapologetically honest”.
This honesty likely accounts for the continued success the students have seen. However, Carey refuses to become complacent in the run up to his performance in New York. As director Amy Conroy told him, following his first performance at the Project Arts Centre, “it won’t always be this easy”. But, although it may not be easy, it appears highly probable that this play will also be a success in New York.
