mrs browns last wedding

Royal Court Theatre, 14/09/00

The Hugely popular Mrs Brown’s Last Wedding made its final return to these shores making people laugh to the very end. The story of the particularly ‘Oirish’ family, the Browns, and especially the domineering matriarch Agnes Brown has been a massive success every time it has played to the people of Liverpool and with a joke every other line, being told at a relentless pace it is not difficult to see why.

Written and directed by Brendon O’Carroll, who takes on extra plaudits for his performance in the lead role, the play revolves around the Brown family’s preparations for the forthcoming wedding of Trevor, the youngest family member, and Maria, the only daughter of the well to do Nicholson family.

The play, on the whole, is set in the Brown’s kitchen and living room. There we see events unfold involving Rory Brown, the closet homosexual trying desperately to come out; Dermot Brown, the unemployed thirty something tinker who has vowed never to walk down the aisle; Mark Brown, the honest elder of the Brown boys, illiterate and suffering severe marital strife and Cathy, the only daughter of the Brown family, a divorced psychologist who has perhaps the best grasp of the lunatic family which surrounds her.

Ninety per cent comedy and ten per cent drama, the story is helped along by the plays peripheral characters: Dino, Rory’s overtly gay chum; Grandad, the decrepit older statesman of the Brown clan and Hilliary Nicholson, the snobbish overbearing mother of the bride to be.
Covering themes such as sex, sexuality, love, drinking, food and downstairs toilets Mrs Browns Last Wedding makes the three hours it lasts seem more like thirty minutes and is guaranteed to put a smile on the most sceptical of faces (honest).