Entertainment
My Left Nut is back to take the Belltable by force
The true Story inspired play My Left Nut is back to be shown at The Belltable. With Michael Patrick’s struggles with masculinity, friendship, family, love, grief and testicles, this is a play you can’t miss!
My Left Nut by Michael Patrick is back to take the Belltable by force
My Left Nut is back! The true story of a Belfast boy growing up with no father to guide him through, and a giant ball to weigh him down. After selling out its run at the Dublin Fringe Festival, where it was nominated for The Bewley’s Little Gem Award for the best show under one hour, this hilarious and heartwarming one-man show is back at Bewley’s Café Theatre in Dublin before touring all around the country.
Set in Belfast in the late early 2000s, My Left Nut tells the true story of Michael Patrick who developed hydrocele testis when he was 14, a condition which caused one of his testicles to start swelling. Too embarrassed to tell his mother, he let the condition worsen for three years until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. By this stage it was bigger than a can of coke and his friends could see the outline of it through his trousers.
400 millilitres. That’s how much liquid was drained from Michael’s left testicle when he was a teenager. That’s more than a can of coke. He should have told someone sooner, but who could he turn to? His dad died ten years ago and besides, school is full of rumours about what the giant bulge in his trousers actually is. Who wants to stop that? A true coming of age comedic play about Belfast, masculinity, friendship, family, love, grief and testicles.
My Left Nut is overflowing with awkward teenage comedy and 00s nostalgia but has a real heart underneath. Michael’s father died when he was very young and the play shows how Michael slowly comes to terms with his father’s death as he deals with his own illness. It touches on the inability of men to talk about their problems, and on the difficulties, single mothers can have in raising young boys. In sharing his tale, Michael hopes to encourage men to seek help for their problems and remove the stigma from such issues.
My Left Nut was originally developed through the Show in a Bag programme, run by Fishamble, The Dublin Fringe Festival, and The Irish Theatre Institute to resource theatre-makers and actors, enabling actors to write their own play. The Show in a Bag programme has created such hits as Dublin Oldschool by Emmet Kirwan and The Humours of Bandon by Margaret McAuliffe. It’s now being produced by Prime Cut Productions (recently nominated for 7 Irish Times Theatre Awards for their production of John Logan’s Red) and Pan Narrans Theatre, run by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney.
My Left Nut, by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, is a Prime Cut and Pan Narrans Co-production, performed by Michael Patrick and directed by Oisín Kearney. It will be shown is The Belltable Theatre April 19-20
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