Bewley’s Café Theatre and The Delmaine String Quartet present

LOVE AND WAR

WORDS AND MUSIC FROM THE WESTERN FRONT

Compiled and Performed by

Michael James Ford, Susannah De Wrixon, Elliot Moriarty, And the Delmaine String Quartet

A special selection of words and music from 1914-18 .

At the heart of the piece are the letters of Artillery Officer, Eric Appleby, to his Athlone sweetheart, Phyllis Kelly. In this moving correspondence, he records the horrors, banalities and ever-present humour of trench life as he yearns to be back with his beloved in a World at peace.
Phyllis was a talented singer who later pursued a career in opera in London. The performance will include several of the popular songs of the period along with some of the great works of the lost generation of war poets.

The Delmaine String Quartet

Philip Dodd, violin; Elaine Rice, violin; Vanessa Sweeney, viola; Robert Pierce, ‘cello

Formed in 1995, the Delmaine String Quartet have studied with Adrian Petcu, Constantin Zanidache, Andreea Banciu, among others. The Quartet have attended masterclasses with the Alberni Quartet at Madingley College, Cambridge, and also with Paul Robertson (Medici String Quartet). In 2009 each member of the Quartet completed an MA degree programme in Performance, at CIT/Cork School of Music, tutored by the Vanbrugh Quartet. The Quartet has performed many public concerts at venues including Pearse Museum, Rathfarnham, Airfied House, Dublin, Kylemore Abbey, Co. Galway, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Michael James Ford recently appeared in Borstal Boy at the Gaiety and in How Many Miles to Babylon at the Lyric, Belfast. His many appearances at the Gate Theatre include Little Women, Present Laughter, Anna Karenina, A Christmas Carol, Salome, Cyrano de Bergerac, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Pride and Prejudice, The Double Dealer and The Rivals. Work at The Abbey includes Translations, Sixteen Possible Glimpses and Observe the Sons of Ulster. Film and TV includes Michael Collins, Widow’s Peak, Becoming Jane, Ripperstreet, Vikings, Penny Dreadful and Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie.
His one-man versions of Wilde’s The Happy Prince and The Remarkable Rocket have toured widely here and overseas.

Susannah De Wrixon’s work at the Abbey Theatre includes Alice in Funderland, Pygmalion, The Comedy of Errors, An Ideal Husband, The Shaughraun and Saint Joan. Other theatre includes Dancing at Lughnasa (Second Age ), I, Keano (Olympia ), Annie (Tivoli Theatre), Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure and Coriolanus. (Loose Canon). Film and TV includes The Clinic, Fair City and Ballykissangel. As a singer Susannah performed in The Alternative American Songbook (NCH), Blossom…dearly and Away in A Major (Irish tour), Fever (Irish and US tour), The Girls of Summer (Opera Theatre Company), Kurt Weill Kaberet and Farewell Ella (Andrews Lane Theatre) and Pyjama Jazz (Tivoli Theatre). Susannah was one of The Nualas trio. She has also recorded three albums Pick Yourself Up, She Swims in the Sea and Tiny Tunes for Tiny People.

Elliot Moriarty recently appeared in Susannah’s Secret (Pavilion Theatre), Macklin (Bewleys), The Pitch (Gate Lab/NUIG), Green Street (Dublin Fringe), Cleansed (The Granary, Cork), The Smell of Want (Project), Poe Show (Bewleys), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Gate). Screen work includes The Gingerbread Men, Tudors, Three Sisters and A Nightingale Falling. Music work includes sound designs for Aunty Ben (Super Paua – Brighton IdeasTap Award Winner) and One Waiting Room (The Complex), and playing with the Bee-Loud Glade Cabaret, Avant Gardaí and 72 Virgins.