Bumbled Theatre

The Ballymaloe Grainstore and TírNa Theatre presents a one-person show starring Colin Hamell. Life is short, especially if you're a bee...

Life is short, especially if you're a bee.
Not long to make honey, prop up the human food chain, and fall in love.

Bumbled is a fast, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt solo show that follows one bee’s chaotic stumble through life — all brought to life by Colin Hamell’s electric storytelling.

Blending sharp comedy with the warmth of classic Irish yarnspinning, the show channels wit, but with a real emotional pulse underneath.

Audiences will laugh, cringe, and walk away with an unexpected sense of hope.

At its core, Bumbled carries a powerful message about how deeply we rely on bees — and how urgently society needs to respect and protect them.

It’s clever, intimate theatre with something real to say.

Come for the humour, stay for the heart, and leave thinking differently about the tiny creatures holding our world together.

Presented on our intimate Grainstore stage...

“Bumbled is a one-person, bee-twerking, Irish slow-dancing, sex-dodging, odyssey - where 'too late' often comes sooner than you think’”.

Sometimes when you find yourself sitting amid nature and learning how it really works, it dawns on you that you have a definite responsibility to at least try to help preserve it.

And as Irishmen, you also have an obligation to take the piss out of it. Because that’s just what we do. We hope you enjoy Bumbled.´

• Performed by Colin Hamell

• Written by Bernard McMullan

• Directed by Carmel O’Reilly

• Sound design by Stephen Russell

• Produced by TírNa Theatre and The Here Comes Everybody Players

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CARMEL O’REILLY is a director and actor living in Cambridge, MA. Originally from Fermanagh in N. Ireland, she founded the Súgán Theatre, a company devoted to contemporary Irish plays. Besides the Súgán, she has directed for many theatre companies in the Boston-area including the American Repertory Theatre. She is a two-time winner of the Norton Award for Outstanding Director. (The Nortons are Boston’s premier theatre awards.) For Tír Na, she also directed Trad, Jimmy Titanic and Return of the Winemaker.

Writer BERNARD MCMULLAN - A native of Belfast, Bernard now lives in Connecticut and is the author of screenplays - The Hidden Wake, The Chicken House and Soon. Bernard also wrote the award-winning Jimmy Titanic for Tir Na Theatre which played Off Broadway and has toured extensively in the US and Ireland. Most recently he penned the hit show ‘Return of the Winemaker’ which the Boston Globe described as “Theatrical gold.”

COLIN HAMELL, Producing/Artistic Director of Tir Na Theatre in Boston, has performed extensively in the US and Europe. Favorite shows include Trad, by Mark Doherty (Sugan and Tir Na Theatre), The Beauty Queen of Leenane starring Julie Harris, by Martin McDonagh (W.H.A.T), Return of the Winemaker, by Bernard McMullan (Tir Na), and The Weir, by Conor McPherson (New Rep). He toured his one-man show Jimmy Titanic, by Bernard McMullan, throughout the US, including an Off Broadway run at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City and multiple locations in Ireland and New Zealand. Jimmy Titanic had its World premiere at Origin’s First Irish in 2013. He is currently touring his new one-man show, Bumbled, premiered at the Foundry in Cambridge MA, and has played in New York City as part of the Origin First Irish Theatre Festival and in the Cork Fit Up Festival, Ireland.

Bumbled first premiered at The Foundry Theatre in Cambridge MA and then in NYC as part of Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival NYC 2024. It is produced by TírNa Theatre and The Here Comes Everybody Players.

• Doors: 7.30pm | Curtains: 8.00pm
• 65 Min play (No intermission)
• Tickets €20, suitable for +12s