Mick Ryan's 'Here At The Fair' folk opera

Aim

Help bring Mick Ryan's folk opera of 19th Century fairground life to the stage.

Mick Ryan's new folk-musical ‘HERE AT THE FAIR’, explores the lives of travelling show people.  Featuring twenty-one new songs and highly regarded performers on the folk scene Paul Downes, Pete Morton, Greg Russell, Ciaran Algar, Heather Bradford, Alice Jones and Mick himself, the show starts rehearsal this autumn.

'Here At The Fair' is set in 1850, a time of great social and political upheaval.   Partly inspired by characters in Dickens' 'Nicholas Nickleby' and Charlie Chaplin's 'Limelight', we meet  veteran actor Vincent Crummles and his dancer daughter Ninetta ('The Infant Phenomenon'), a clown, a quack doctor, a fortune teller, and a ballad seller and a flea circus presenter.  

Behind the face each presents to the world is a back story which unfolds during the show to address the issue of the relevance of the lives they lead and the 'mere escapism' they offer the public.

Crowdfunders will be backing production and promotion of the show through to performance next year - everyone who pledges will have a personal thank you in the show programme.  

'Players all, and showmen, here we are

No other place is ours. We come. We go

This is our stage, and this our repertoire

This is our home, for this is all we know

Our road is long, and each of us a tale

Of comedy and tragedy, a flow

Of stories. We succeed, and then we fail

We rise again. We fall. We reap. We sow

We turn to lights and laughter when we can

We gather round, divert ourselves with fun

We can’t forget the past, yet every man

And woman, seeks the future at a run

And if, to reach it, we must climb the rope

That hangs us all, yet still we climb in hope.'

About the show's writer, Mick Ryan

Mick has been singing and writing songs in traditional style since he was sixteen.  

In the 1980s he wrote both comic and serious material for popular band Crows, and his stage musical The Guest House co-written with fellow ‘Crow’ Steven Faux,  was runner-up for the Vivien Ellis Prize.

Since the 1990s he has written a series of highly successful folk musicals: A Tolpuddle Man (with Graham Moore), A Day's Work, The Voyage, Tanks for the Memory, and The Navvy's Wife, all have been enthusiastically received on the folk scene and beyond. 

The reviews say it all: 'Mick Ryan's words and music are superb' (Folk on Tap); 'Wonderful songs' (South Tipp Today), 'Positively oozes skill and professionalism' (Folk North West).

 To read more and hear sound clips please visit Wildgoose Studios.

This project successfully funded on 27th October 2017