The Scene Where Everyone Goes Yee-haw

Kyteler's Inn Texas. Wednesday 1868. There's a man looking at an empty, hazy landscape. Music plays.

Welcome to Kilkenny, Action Hero and their production of A Western.

You want cowboys? Villains? Whores? Blood? Gunfights? Standoffs? Whiskey? Piano playing? Moustaches? Running across the top of a train? Well, you'll get them all here. At least most of them anyway. And if you don't see it, it doesn't mean it's not happening around you.

A Western is a cracking, fun piece of theatre delivered by Gemma Paintin (the whore / lover) and James Stenhouse (the hero), with Kyteler's Inn on Kieran Street transformed into 1868 Texas.

The fun in it, of course, is that it's the audience's imagination that transform the pub setting, turn the bike into a horse, the ketchup into blood and the romantic flashbacks into moments of cinematic magic was the camera pulling out over the orange sunset until the credits roll up and fade to black.

For 50 minutes I sat, stood, kneeled (you've got to move around a bit as literally ALL of the venue is used as a performance space at some point or another) and watched as all the stereotypical (and vital) parts of classic western movies were acted out for an audience of all ages. John Wayne eat your ketchup-covered heart out.

We had the scene where the hero orders a drink, the scene where everyone stops talking when the hero enters the room, the scene where the women wait, the scene where the card table gets turned over and much more.

It's yet another piece of theatre that brings a very comfortable element of audience participation to the festival programme and with only one performance remaining (it's only in town for two nights before the stagecoach leaves again - insert drumroll / applause anywhere you like) I'm gonna say that you'll need to go see this show.

It's on at 6:30pm, wraps in plenty of time to get to Susan & Darren tomorrow night and makes for a great way to start the evening, grab a pint, and dive back into the theatre side of the festival.

Pow pow.

Photo above by Dylan Vaughan.

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