Once Tickets

A timeless love story once seen, never forgotten

A timeless love story featuring award-winning songs and broken vacuum cleaners, Once condensed the tale of an anonymous guy and girl into an eighty-minute film which showcased the city of Dublin and the musicians it attracts. Garlanded with awards of its own since opening off-Broadway in 2011, the stage adaptation follows The Book of Mormon eastwards to the West End in 2013, one of several new theatre shows in London for a new year.

The Irish musician, played in the film by Glen Hansard (formerly of the band The Frames and now a successful solo artist), spends his days busking in Dublin’s streets warding off vagrants looking to steal his earnings. A chance meeting with a lady from the Czech Republic is the dramatic thrust of the piece, she alone in a strange place and he looking for direction and a break in his music career.

The Girl character, originally played by Markéta Irglová, reveals herself to be a talented pianist who pays regular visits to the local music shop to tinkle the ivories, to the sympathetic ears of any browsers and the patron of the shop. The film is a two-handed musical, and Enda Walsh brings his experience to bear in transferring it to the stage; a lively bar setting allows the audience to share in the drama further, making it a thorough experience where musicians strum and harmonise while the two protagonists carry out the fumblings of friendship.

Emotions run high, but above all the strong songs impress a viewer beyond the moment they are heard. Listen out for When Your Mind’s Made Up and Falling Slowly, and cheer for characters whose names we never know, but whose fates we are bound to care for.

The lead roles of Guy and Girl will be played by Declan Bennett and Zrinka Cvitešić. Declan, who has released albums of his own material, recently starred on Broadway in Rent and American Idiot, and makes an appearance in the forthcoming Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. Zrinka has played several roles in Croatian theatre, including in Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Threepenny Opera. Along with several award-winning film roles, she is famous in her homeland for winning Dancing with the Stars in 2010.

Once tickets in London:

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