The Walworth Farce will finish its world tour in Australia early next year.

By Aaron Dunne

Galway’s Druid Theatre Company will bring the curtain down on the biggest ever world tour of an Irish play when they arrive in Sydney next April.

The company are currently in the US, halfway through their massive world tour of Irish writer Enda Walsh’s play, The Walworth Farce, by the end of which they will have performed in six countries and 22 cities. (That’s whopping 209 performances for those keeping count!)

The tour, which kicked off in September in Galway, will have gone through Ireland, England, Canada and the US before landing Down Under to perform shows in Perth, Adelaide, Wollongong, Newcastle, Wellington and Canberra before finishing up in Sydney on April 24.

The play, which centres around three Irish men in a council flat in London, will run in Perth from February 23 – 27 at the Playhouse Theatre as part of the Perth International Arts Festival, an event where another of Walsh’s works, The New Electric Ballroom, featured last year.

From there Druid will move on to play the Fringe Festival in Adelaide at Her Majesty’s Theatre from March 3 – 5, the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre in Wollongong from March 10 – 13, the Civic Theatre in Newcastle from March 25 – 27, the Canberra Theatre from April 7 – 10, and the Sydney Theatre from April 14 – 24.

The tour is being funded partly by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland, who have also provided funding for Irish dance theatre, Fabulous Beast, and their production of Giselle, which will be presented at the Sydney Festival next January.

For more information log on to www.artsprojectsaustralia.com.au or www.sydneyfestival.org.au