For its inaugural production as a new theatre company, Lemon Soap Productions brings audiences an exciting new radio play this November, entitled Marmalade Row. The play, produced in association with the New Theatre and Grianan Theatre in Donegal, chronicles five households on the eponymous Marmalade Row, giving audiences a glimpse into their lives across one night. In light of this premiere, The University Times spoke to Ultan Pringle, writer of Marmalade Row and a founding member of the Lemon Soap team, about the colourful radio play.
Pringle, a recent Drama and Theatre Studies and Classical Civilisations Trinity graduate, credits his writing and acting to being a member of DU Players, significantly being the society’s chairperson last year. Throughout his time as the society’s chairperson, Players produced around 70 plays online, enabling Pringle to perfect the form of the online play when approaching Marmalade Row, noting that “I knew how to make it really good”.
Although Pringle stresses that “the play never mentions Covid” as well as his reluctance to acknowledge the pandemic, he notes that “we have all just spent 18 months where all we could really do was think about [ourselves]”. In this sense, the conceptualisation of Marmalade Row grew out of the question of “what happens when you lose your sense of self”. From this basis, Pringle explains that each episode of the five part show “follows a different resident on Marmalade Row and looks at a specific night of their life” and follows the thematic thread of “their sense of self and memory”.
These five pieces, which range from a conversation between a married couple, a young man who consistently sees an old lady with maggots falling out of her eyes, two female lovers on the awkwardness of their second date, a musical interlude about a young transgender man to an insomniac woman looking at the stars at night, are all strangely interconnected. In addition, the eclectic storyline is complemented by the star-studded cast for the debut, which includes Marion O’Dwyer, whom Pringle credits as “one of [his] favourite actors in Dublin”, and Pat Nolan, who star as the married couple in the first episode. Pringle notably recalls his and director Julia Appleby’s fear around the established actors, recalling that despite their initial hesitations, “they were so lovely”.
Pringle himself stars in the second part of the piece and credits Appleby’s directing as a highlight to his experience. Indeed, having previously been used to a writer-director dynamic between the two, with Appleby having directed most of Pringle’s plays produced in college, their actor-director dynamic throughout the production of Marmalade Row was a “refreshing experience”. “She was really tough and that was amazing”, Pringle adds. “It’s exactly what you want as an actor.” Overall, he notes that it has been “wonderful” and “a really easy process” where he was able to have a “lovely time doing a radio play that is actually quite ambitious in form and content”, complemented by a talented cast.
In Pringle’s words, audiences can expect an initially bizarre experience from Marmalade Row, with his acknowledgement that the production has “a slanted strangeness to it”. He further digresses that, “if you sit down with a cup of tea and a bar of chocolate to listen to it, [audiences] are going to have a nice, strange, warm feeling”. He ultimately notes this as an overarching aim of the play, explaining that “we want people to have this feeling of warmth, like you had a glimpse into the lives of these five different houses on Marmalade Row and to come out of it feeling nourished by it”.
Partnering with the New Theatre for its Dublin premiere, Marmalade Row will be livestreamed at 7pm on November 9th, 10th and 11th through the New Theatre website, where tickets are also available. The play will then travel to Donegal at the Grianan Theatre in December, where it will also be livestreamed.
