Opening night standing ovation for The Last Stand

‘What a play. Opening night was a WOW with audience, actors, production people all buzzing with job-well-done post-show excitement. For playwright Dominic Palmer it must be hugely gratifying to see something you have sweated long hours over take on a life of its own. Hats off to director Ben Barnes for seeing the potential in the play and bringing his experience to bear in smoothing the rough edges and getting it stage-ready. Every time you go see a play you are seeing actors putting their own lives on hold as they not just assume the roles of their characters but become those characters. The Last Stand has three on-stage actors and three phone-ins we don’t get to meet. Morgan C. Jones, as presenter Tom Hooks, drives the whole thing along in wonderful crash-bang-wallop fashion. He goes from gregarious and self-confident to bombastic and sneery to angry and full of self denial to, finally, rueful, contemplative and accepting. His loyal and ever-patient ‘sidekick’ Techie Brendan (Dylan Kennedy) has his boss’s back throughout and his droll and pithy deliveries make him, from the start, a favourite with the audience. The love interest Sarah (Fiona Browne) is the strongest character in the play, her no-nonsense hard-loving approach helping Hooks to see the light. The unseen phone-in characters may have no more than talk-on parts, but the cumulative effect of their contributions is to bring Hooks that bit closer to blowing a gasket. In this particular regard, Keith from Wexford nails it!  Take a bow Dominic Palmer. This is a fine piece of work.’
Momos Sweeney