Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman - on stage, October 16th!

Sligo's Blue Raincoat Theatre Company will be performing Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman next month, in an adaptation for the stage by Jocelyn Clarke. And blather.net will be involved, but we can't tell you too much about that yet. Watch this space for updates.

As ye well know, the works of Flann O'Brien are fierce important to us here at Blather High Command. The Third Policeman is probably my favourite novel - and we've done lots here to keep the spirit (and wine, beer etc.) of Flann alive, through the Flann O'Brien Myspace page, the connections between Lost and The Third Policeman, Flann and Schrödinger, and of course, Blather is named after a short-lived publication started by Flann/Brian O'Nolan. And we love his plan for escaping the "British" Isles.

The Third Policeman will be performed from from 16th to 20th October at the Factory Artspace, Sligo, and 25th to 27th at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, and back in Sligo again from 30th October to the 3rd November.

O'Brien's classic novel is all at once a murder thriller, a comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender brief unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle and a chilling fable of eternal grief.

The Third Policeman features John Carty, Patrick Curley, Kellie Hughes, Ciarán McCauley, Fiona McGeown and Sandra O'Malley.

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles." - The Third Policeman

Where on earth would one find a group of village policemen obsessed with bicycles even going so far as to steal the things themselves to counteract the effects of an atomic theory which holds that through a sort of molecular transfer the owners of bicycles become bicycles themselves and vice versa?

I have no idea.

Where would you find a character that has a wooden leg, cannot remember his own name, and is party to a murder and devoted to the musings of an eccentric philosopher named De Selby who believes that the earth is not round but shaped like a sausage?

Once again, I am at a loss

Moreover, in addition and while we are at it. How many policemen do you know who have a device which works by storing loud noises such as shouting and hammering, and later con­verting them into light when needed?

I know of no such cohort.

Would you like to make their acquaintance?

Indeed I would

You should go to The Factory Performance Space on October 16th.

Will they attend?

Blue Raincoat Theatre Company will be there with their production of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. You will be introduced to a host of characters and find yourself in balls of laughter.

The Third Policeman By Flann O'Brien. What's that?

It is a murder mystery, a hilarious comedy, a fable of eternal grief, the story of romantic love between a man and his bicycle, a surreal vision of eternity with a cast that includes police­men, a man, his soul, a one-legged gallows maker and bicycles.

Sounds fantastic

It will be.

How do I book?

Phone Blue Raincoat at 071 9170431 or email bluerain@iol.ie