BOG PEOPLE
2007

“Big Telly - always there to surprise you with a fresh, original interpretation….

It’s quite extraordinary the way Big Telly manage to take such a potentially heavy theme and make it work as a piece of entertaining accessible theatre… fast moving…contemporary humour extremely well used…sheer timing and skill, a lightness of touch…deft direction.”
BBC Arts Extra 24 September 2007

Bog People manages to be funny, warm, and sad all at the same time. Framed by the chorus that echoes lines from the plays, evoking different periods of time and bringing the four stories together, the final moments of the performance speak to the recent history of NI. Yet the effect is not only of sorrow, but also of a shared sense of the task ahead, moving beyond the conflict and the violence to find common ground. Bog People is another moving and imaginative production from a talented theatre company.”
Culture NI, October 07

If a theatrical experience inspired by Seamus Heaney’s bog poems conjures up images of An Beal Bocht without the laughs, then prepare to be pleasantly surprised. Three writers turn out three acts deftly constructed from a series of interconnected vignettes that move rapidly back and forth through time. An expertly understated cast breathes life into Heaney’s metaphor of the bog as a layered repository of human history and experience. Dark secrets and even pagan sacrifice sit surprisingly well with earthy humour and contemporary preoccupations, helped by a simple set, excellent lighting and the liberal use of music. Once again, the director Zoe Seaton demonstrates that theatre can be inventive and intelligent without neglecting its fundamental duty to entertain.
Sunday Times, 30th September 07