So in two chunks (second to follow shortly) here goes!

A new play to the Newry stage is Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean. Robert Altman directed the low-budget film version of the play by Ed Graczyk, which some of you may have seen and which was also directed by Altman on Broadway using the same cast.

The action takes place in the small Texas town of McCarthy in 1975. Inside of a five-and-dime store, a reunion is planned for the members of a local 1950s James Dean fan club.   An odd assortment of women arrive, revealing hidden secrets, the action flashes back, showing the women as young James Dean fans, and then jumps forward to present day to reveal the ravages of time and lost innocence. Among the women returning for the reunion is Mona (Sandy Dennis in the film), a disturbed woman who, in the '50s, got a job as an extra on the Giant shoot and nine months later gave birth to a son, who she claims is James Dean's child.

There is Sissy (Cher in the film), a wisecracking waitress – her first ‘serious’ film role, and also Joanne (Karen Black), who holds a shocking secret that is revealed at the reunion.  Besides the three main players, a collection of supporting characters manoeuvre around the periphery. They are Stella Mae (Kathy Bates), the wife of a rich petroleum executive; Edna Louise (Marta Heflin), a shy, withdrawn woman with numerous children; Juanita (Sudie Bond), the manager of the five-and-dime store; and Joe Qualley (Mark Patton), a young man who likes to dress up in women's clothing.

Misery is a dark, but witty venture into Stephen King territory.  It's about a popular novelist who crashes his car on a snowy mountain road and is rescued by a nurse who claims she is his number one fan.  As the time goes by, he realizes she has no intention of letting him leave.

The film – which you likely have seen - moves with a brisk, taut pace thanks to director Rob Reiner, who helmed another excellent Stephen King film, Stand By Me.  Tension is kept mostly throughout (there are some predictable moments...but who cares?) and the performances are also a major plus.  James Caan is very easy to empathize with, and he manages to keep his cynical sense of humour.  Richard Farnsworth, as a grizzled sheriff was a nice addition to the film since his character didn't exist in the book.  He also has a nice sense of humour, and he's the kind of guy who you want to root for.  But the most amazing performance is from Kathy Bates, who treads a fine line alternating between sweet and lovable to amazingly evil.  She won an Oscar for this movie, and whole-heartedly deserved it. This is one of the few horror films to take an Oscar.

By the end, the theatre goer has been through the lead character’s ‘Misery’. We sometimes feel his pain, and it is so much fun to hate this woman......

How it will be performed on stage in Newry remains a mystery, but it will be worth attending just to find out!

ALL MY SONS, a stage play by Arthur Miller, one-time husband of Marlyn Munroe, is also featured this year. It frequently features on the school syllabus, so we give more details about it.  It is a complex morality drama and it pays to know the plot before entering the theatre.

The action of the play is set in August 1947, in the mid-west of the U.S.A. The events depicted occur between Sunday morning and a little after two o'clock the following morning.

Joe Keller, the chief character, is a man who loves his family above all else, and has sacrificed everything, including his honour, in his struggle to make the family prosperous.  He is now sixty-one.  He has lost one son in the war, and is keen to see his remaining son, Chris, marry.  Chris wishes to marry Ann, the former fiancée of his brother, Larry.  Their mother, Kate, believes Larry still to be alive.  It is this belief which has enabled her, for three and a half years, to support Joe by concealing her knowledge of a dreadful crime he has committed.

Christina Reid’s Tea in a China Cup is set in Belfast.  During the days surrounding the Twelfth of July celebrations, three generations of Protestant women in Belfast attempt to preserve a sense of community and family continuity by handing down traditions and possessions.

Moonshine  is to be performed by the Lifford Players.  No one can accuse the new crop of Irish playwrights of shying away from the big issues. ''Moonshine,'' a play by Jim Nolan is at heart a romantic comedy about death, burial and the Resurrection, taking place on an Easter weekend in a small Irish village.

Mr. Nolan offers a little something for everybody. There is a love triangle, a lapse of religious faith, a midlife crisis, a death in the family, just about everything except politics, which is unusual for contemporary Irish plays.   But in over two and a half hours what it has mostly is a lot of talk, and little of it to any particular point.

At the center is McKeever, a mortician who is also the director of the local amateur theatre group. As undertaker, McKeever has a propensity to put his foot in his mouth and has trouble getting the right body in the right grave.  As stage director, his cast for a forthcoming production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' stands at four actors to play the twenty-two roles and is dwindling fast.

As 'Moonshine' opens McKeever is paying a professional call on the Reverend Langton, the local Protestant minister, whose wife is dying.   Langton's church is about to be closed because the congregation has fled to other parishes, and he finds his religious convictions have deserted him as well.  Langton's daughter, estranged from her parents since she left the village five years earlier after an affair with McKeever arrives from London for the funeral.   McKeever, who has an unflagging belief in the redemptive power of the theatre, sets about to restore Langton's faith, regain the daughter's love, get the curtain up on his new production and bury Mrs. Langton in the village churchyard.

While some individual scenes show promise, possible conflicts end abruptly, often with a platitude, and the characters are underdeveloped.  The funniest parts are the rehearsals of the mechanicals for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' but credit for that belongs to Shakespeare.

There are four more plays to be staged at this year’s Newry Drama Festival and we will review them later. 

That is surely enough to be going on with.