3:30pm Thursday 9th April 2009
HUNDREDS of Christian statues are set to be smashed...all in the name of art.
Staff at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre are hard at work handpainting 500 religious icons for a play.
But the statues have a destructive destiny when the Lonesome West reaches a shattering climax.
Set in urban Ireland, the drama is about two argumentative brothers who refuse to get along and one ends up by throwing the figures – including a likeness of the Virgin Mary – to the ground in a furious rage.
Mary Huntingdon, press officer for the Roman Catholic diocese of Brentwood, said she was unsure whether some members of the audience might find the treatment of the figurines offensive. She said: “I suppose the act of smashing them is all part of theatre.
“You can’t really get in the way of a theatre’s role in the community as an entertainer.”
Stage managers Deborah Stubbington and Rebecca Raggett, and artist Rhiannon Howell, have so far finished 250 of the Christian figurines, with 250 still to complete before curtain-up on April 17.
The Lonesome West is one third of the award-winning Leenane trilogy by well-known playwright Martin McDonagh, who won fame for his 2008 film In Bruges.
Critics have described the play as black comedy at its finest, with staged violence a trademark of McDonagh’s work. The audience will be seated on the stage as part of the theatre’s commitment to “creating exciting performance spaces”.
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