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“Tell me love is winning…”

Valve Hegarty makes his living by recording radio advertisements, but he is a singer at heart. “If I don’t sing I get sick,” he tells us. Performed as a one-man show by Little John Nee, Radio Rosario is a play that unfolds through music and storytelling. Resisting any conventional linear narrative, Valve’s story traverses layers of memory and meaning with humour and heart.

Hegarty recounts his life in Galway, the people he sees every day, the work he does, and the places he stops, before describing a chance encounter with a man at a car boot sale which brings him to the Marconi Station. He buys an old radio from the man and “tunes in to the silence,” but as we see at the Marconi station, even in solitary silence, the shadows and whispers of the past are still present. Using the ghostly character of Rosario, who broadcasts her imagination, amongst references to war and upheaval, Radio Rosario presents a story of innocence interrupted. The past, present, and possible glimpses of the future blend together, repeating and varying to explore themes of nostalgia, memory, imagination and optimism.

Sarah Jane Shiels’ lighting and Triona Lillis’ set design evoke a timeless and fluid setting that frees the story from the constraints of the space. Shiels’ use of floor lights in cages and visible side lights suggest the performing side of Hegarty’s life, while elements of the set suggest a music-hall and a dockyard simultaneously. Paired with Laura Sheehan’s video creations, these bring the audience on Valve’s journey with him, through ever-changing settings, without needing to pause the lyrical and narrative flow of the plot.

Radio Rosario is a warm work that entertains, whilst cautioning the audience to remember the past and learn from it. As the punk matriarch of Butcher’s Quay, Polly Tunnel, says, “If love is losing what are you going to do? Start hating just so you can be on the winning side?”