30 Apr 2024
Thursday 30 May - Saturday 1 June 2024, 7.30pm
Blue Raincoat Theatre Company are Ireland's longest-running theatre ensemble and have graced the Tron's main stage many times over the years, most recently with Jocelyn Clarke's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland in 2018. Renowned for their unique style of theatre-making - breathtaking storytelling - underpinned by a distinctive aesthetic, absurdist movement and evocative soundscapes - their latest work, The Last Pearl is the fourth in a recent series of devised works that have included Shackleton (which played the Tron in 2017), The School Days of Thaddeus K and Hunting Darwin.
Loosely based on the ideas of the environmentalist James Lovelock, most famous for his Gaia hypothesis that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, The Last Pearl tells the story of M, a pearl diver, in her search to survive in an ever-changing and increasingly challenging environment. Using scaled models as well as shadow puppetry and bunraku (traditional Japanese puppet theatre with small dolls, chanting and samisen playing), M and her daughter scavenge and explore a dying world in the aftermath of a typhoon.
Directed by Niall Henry, The Last Pearl features work from long time Blue Raincoat collaborators, writer and dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke (First Cosmonaut, Flann O'Brien Trilogy) and designer Jamie Vartan (The Last Hotel, The Walworth Farce, Ballyturk) and the Blue Raincoat ensemble includes performers familiar to Tron audiences, Sandra O'Malley and John Carty, alongside Brian F Devaney, Áine Ní Laoghaire and Aisling Mannion.
The Last Pearl will open in the Tron Theatre's main auditorium on Thursday 30 May and the 3-performance run will conclude on Saturday 1 June.
Running time: approx. 70 minutes (no interval).
