There is nothing more self-conscious than an Irish theatre audience, particularly one drawn down from town to the back of beyond for a one-man show. But those who made the trip to the parish halls of Donegal this past week can now say they were there when Little John Nee walked tall.
In Rural Electric, this cult performer has created a masterpiece of storytelling theatre from the unpromising premise of the electrification of one of the last parishes in Ireland to see the light. Set somewhere in a half-light that extends from 1959, this is the story of the sacrifice and the suffering of those heroic men from the Irish Electricity Supply Board who fought to free Donegal from darkness. Men like George "Moody" McLaughlin, who goes through his own personal Iwo Jima raising a pole near Muckish mountain. "Many of them," as Nee tells it, "had never got out of bed in the morning before. And some days it rained ... "
They also have to contend with the sceptics: those who say the electric light is too bright, those who prefer the company of the shadows thrown by their oil lamps, and the dark complexities of one-eyed Father Murphy - a literal interpreter of the biblical maxim to cut out organs that cause you to sin.
Yet, laugh as you do, Rural Electric is no absurdist Father Ted farce. Nee's characters are too real; too many of their ghosts haunt the corners of the halls in which he chose to premiere the play. Like those valiant electricity men, he delivers magic radiance to light the darkest day.
· At Tuam arts festival, Galway, on August 26. Box office: 00353 9325001. Then touring.
