Sligo's Blue Raincoat theatre company have established themselves as one of the most innovative theatre companies in Ireland since they began twenty-five years ago, forging a distinct repertoire that deploys everything from movement, dance and even puppetry to bring their productions alive on stage.
Now for their latest show, they are venturing back down the rabbit hole with a revival of the Jocelyn Clarke's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which opens at The Factory Space their week.
First staged almost twenty years ago in 1998, this sprightly retelling of Lewis Carrol's classic tale, featuring newcomer Miriam Needham, might be coming at a very opportune time considering the fairly mad and unpredictable world we're living in at the moment.
Artistic Director Niall Henry agrees and jokes that because "we live in such a strange strange place, there's ample possibilities to explore those things" adding that as a result "audiences understand (absurdity) more".
Mind you, bringing the absurd to life for Irish audiences has been the sine qua non of Blue Raincoat since it began in the early '90s, either through its interpretation of classics like The Tempest and At Swim Two Birds or newly devised pieces such as Shakleton which played to full houses earlier this year.
Henry says the company was eager to go back and revisit one of their previous productions for this anniversary year - and with well over one hundred productions to chose from, it was no mean feat.
"We going long enough now - we've done about 120 to 130 shows - that we can actually go back over twenty years and pick a show and reinvent it. We've taken the old script, but we're reinventing the show - it's not the same production", he assures.
He says there's great advantages in going back and revisiting old productions such as their revival of Synge's classic The Playboy of the Western World two years ago.
"One of the good things about going back is that there's stuff you can learn. When we re-did Playboy one of the things that jumped out at me was that because we had done a lot of devised work over the past ten years, one of the things I needed to concentrate more on was character development."
"We were good at story telling, we were good at entertaining the audience, but to get more drama out of it - we needed to specifically concentrate on that", he added.
So what does the future hold now for Blue Raincoat as it looks to the future? Following the demise of Waterford's Red Kettle Theatre Co. and the increasingly small pot of funding available from the Arts Council, there's clearly additional pressures to keep the show on the road while maintaining their distinct ethos.
Henry says they were one of the lucky ones to have survived, amid fairly astonishing levels of attrition in the regional theatre scene in recent years.
"We were one of the fortunate ones. There was a huge culling going on back five or six years ago - there was about sixteen or seventeen companies that closed down. The only two regularly funded ones outside Dublin are ourselves and Druid".
"We lost about twenty five per cent of our funding - but some people were 'taken out' altogether. So we're very lucky in that sense", he admits.
Alice in Wonderland runs from October 24 to November 5 at the Factory Performance Space, Sligo
John O'Driscoll
