'Princess' a hit in Galway

Mary Goggin will perform in “Runaway Princess” in New York on Saturday afternoon. PHOTO CREDIT: JEFF MOSIER

By Irish Echo Staff

Mary Goggin's autobiographical show “Runaway Princess,” which swept the United Solo Awards in 2018 and was presented in February at the 2019 FRIGID New York Festival, was one of the standout hits at the recently Galway Fringe Festival.

Goggin picked up the Best Actor award at the festival ahead of a triumphant return to New York, where she will perform the show on Saturday afternoon. (Details here.)

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Subtitled “A Hopeful Tale of Heroin, Hooking and Happiness,” it’s a “show that really packed a punch,” according to the Galway Advertiser, and the story “was told matter of factly, neither sensational nor self-pitying, and with frequent flashes of humor.”

Advertiser reviewer Charlie McBride added: “She vividly evoked the range of characters she encountered from parents, to teachers, pushers and pimps. Her narrative voice reminded me very much of the great American writer Lucia Berlin who similarly spun the raw material of her own alcoholism and disorderly life into compelling stories. Always riveting, often funny, and ultimately deeply moving, Runaway Princess’ was another personal highpoint of the last fortnight.”

A New York critic said in a similar vein when it was debuted: “Miss Goggin injects effortless humor into a masterful story of drugs, homelessness and prostitution

Goggin’s parents, who were from Schull, Co. Cork and Bangor Erris, Co. Mayo, emigrated from Ireland to the Bronx, where the future actor was born in the 1950s. She returned in her teens to live with an aunt in Dublin and continue her education with the Holy Faith sisters in Glasnevin, before leaving again for New York.

She has been acting on stage and in film and television for 20 years, with a favorite recent role being Ella O’Neill (wife of Eugene O’Neill) in Ann Hansen’s “Road to Babylon.” For more information, visit her website here.

 

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