Bouncing back from a cancelled show (Wait Until Dark), The Pump House Theatre Company has gone on to greater things with a fine performance of Frank McGuinness’ wildly humourous and deeply affecting Irish drama, There Came A Gypsy Riding, admirably directed by Anne Hornsby.

The show marks the amateur premiere of this beautifully written work, which sees a family gathered together to mark the loss of their youngest son. Despite the sombre air, there’s room for some wonderful bickering between the relatives, and their opinions of each other’s shortcomings are fully and frankly vented.

Of the cast, Linda Williams can be forgiven for needing the odd prompt because her up-in-the-clouds cousin Brigit is so loveable and walks the balance between being wildly unhinged and frighteningly lucid with perfect poise. Liz Peskin excels as the struggle weary and grief striken mother, whose desire to better herself has turned her into a control freak - that is until she has to face circumstances she cannot control.

Ian Flatt, as the father is the archetypal dad, a doer not a thinker, but his vulnerability is exposed when his son’s suicide note comes to light. "Maybe he'd still be alive if we'd had a boat," he desperately emplores, as sadness finally overwhelmes him. Lucie Edwards and Mark Dawson are particularly outstanding as the surviving siblings whose lives have always been overshadowed by their brother’s action - they have found a solidarity apart from their parents but both need the reassurance that they matter as much as their dead sibling in their own way.

So credit to the cast, the set builders and crew for such an accomplished production and well done to the substantial audiences for giving this wonderful play their support.

This may have been the play's amateur debut but there was nothing amateur about this performance at all.

Melanie Dakin