Michael Scott’s iconic production of John B. Keane’s hilarious dramatic comedy The Matchmaker is coming to the INEC next month. 

THE MATCHMAKER: John B. Keane’s hilarious dramatic comedy The Matchmaker starring Jon Kenny and Norma Sheahan is coming to the INEC next month.

The play opened in Spirit in January 2001 starring Anna Managhan and Des Keogh. The production went on to tour Ireland, sell-out at the Edinburgh Festival, become a video and DVD with Sony, a BBC Radio Series, and play ‘off Broadway’.

Many of Ireland’s leading actors have joined the production over the years, including, Mary McEvoy, Ann Charleston (Madge in Neighbours), Geraldine Plunkett, Des Nealon and the late Mick Lally, one of our most loved actors.

Now for its 21st year, one of Ireland's leading dramatic actresses Norma Sheahan joins Jon Kenny, who was part of the Irish comic duo d’Unbelievables with Pat Shortt, in this iconic production at the Gleneagle INEC Arena on September 18. Together they play a myriad of characters in this hilarious and earthy dramatic comedy.

The play follows the efforts of Dicky Mick Dicky O'Connor to make matches for the lonely and lovelorn. Using his inimitable way with words and his one sense of “devilment” and wit, Keane delves into the longings, hungers, fears and foibles of this collection of lonely country people and creates a marvellously colourful world, taking us back to a simpler time, when phones were few and far between and the only web was one left behind by spiders.

Norma Sheahan loved by audiences from her roles in The Clinic, Bridget and Eamon and Moone Boy, is the only other actress apart from Vanessa Redgrave to have sold out the Gaiety Theatre in a one woman show (not once, but twice) in her role as Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine which has just completed an enormously successful national tour. The production is directed by Michael Scott.

Tickets from €27.90 are on sale now from www.inec.ie and www.ticketmaster.ie.