n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Belfast: Empire Theatre

1960 ?

-

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

Play/Drama

-

-

-

Sam Thompson's Over The Bridge, when it was first presented 50 years ago in Belfast's since demolished Empire Theatre, broke the misama of deference to Ulster's then ruling Unionist party's cabal of retired colonels, majors, captains and minor squirearchies. For Thompson, who'd been a painter in the city's shipyards, having been encouraged by another figure on the literary left, Sam Hanna Bell of BBC Northern Ireland, had written a play which both exposed and detailed the sectarianism which was then part of everyday working life in the Harland and Wolff yards which had produced the Titanic. But the Board of the publicly funded Group Theatre, whose members included the BBC's local Head of Programmes Harry McMullan, had turned down the drama, declaring that they were "determined not to mount a play which would give rise to sectarianism or political controversy of an extreme nature". As so frequently occurs, the old squires had isolated themselves from the public mood, so when the Group's Artistic Director, James Ellis, who would later to achieve a wider acclaim as Sergeant Lynch in the gritty Merseyside cop-shopper Z Cars, resigned in protest and set up a new company, Ulster Bridge Productions, he took the play - and most of his company - with him to pack the much larger Empire for week upon week before transferring to Dublin and London.
- Ian Hill, British Theatre Guide

A denunciation of sectarianism amongst a flurry of working men midst ropes, gantries and the hum of industry