Enda Walsh’s ‘The New Electric Ballroom’ electrifies

Although the plays of Enda Walsh, 42, have not yet opened on Broadway, there’s no doubt that he is fast securing his reputation in the U.S. as arguably the most accomplished Irish playwright of his generation.

Walsh’s dark and challenging scripts aren’t calculated to appeal to a very wide demographic, but they’re winning a lot of public and critical attention nonetheless.

In 2008 Walsh’s script for the Bobby Sands biopic “Hunger” was part of the creative partnership with director Steve McQueen that won them the coveted Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The year before Walsh struck gold with the Cork-based comedy “The Walworth Farce,” which won the Fringe First Award at Edinburgh and then played internationally to packed houses.

Walsh was back in town last week for the American premiere of his latest play “The New Electric Ballroom” (which has also won the Fringe First Award, two years in a row). The play, an edgy new shocker that stars some of Ireland’s most celebrated actors, is a Druid Theatre production that Walsh directed, and since its premiere at the Druid Theatre in Galway the production has only grown in strength and focus.

This week Walsh is back in London moving house, talking to IrishCentral’s sister publication the Irish Voice between the loading vans, last minute shopping and other interview requests. But just like the characters he writes about, Walsh is capable of remarkable concentration in the midst of flux, and it turns out to be the perfect way to talk to him about his challenging, quicksilver scripts.

“I do think it’s a better play ‘The Walworth Farce,’” Walsh said. I don’t know how it works fully; the whole shape of it is sort of unusual structurally. And I don’t know where the play is going a lot of the time. It still sort of surprises me, but I’m glad it’s turned out the way it’s turned out.”

Walsh first came to prominence as a writer in 1998 when his play “Disco Pigs” became a huge hit in Ireland (it was later made into a film starring Cillian Murphy). Currently he’s under commission for two films, an adaptation of his play “Chatroom” and a biopic about legendary English soul singer Dusty Springfield.

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Nster.com