A brand-new musical play based on an amazing world-record-breaking Arthog teacher arrives in Meirionnydd this weekend.

Atlantic Ladies is being performed at Aberdyfi on Friday (tomorrow) and Barmouth on Saturday (as part of the welcome celebrations for the town’s new lifeboat ‘Ella Larsen’).

Sixty-two-year-old Dianne Carrington recently became the oldest woman ever to row across any ocean anywhere in the world.

With her amateur crewmates – Abergavenny lawyer Elaine Theaker and Shrewsbury maternity nurse Sharon Magrath – she completed the 3,000-mile trans-Atlantic journey from the Canaries to the Caribbean in just 60 days…and rowed right into The Guinness Book of Records.

Now, her dare-devil adventure has been turned into a highly successful play which sold out for every performance last week at Shrewsbury’s £28-million-pound Theatre Severn.

The show, written by former BBC Radio 4 producer Chris Eldon Lee, tells the Atlantic Ladies’ amazing adventures in their own words, peppered with some of the popular songs they sang along the way.

“I remember one crazy day when the weather was really awful”, says Dianne. “The waves were as big as houses and kept crashing over our little red rowing boat ‘Poppy’. So, we sang We’re All Going On A Summer Holiday to keep our spirits up. Our voyage was a real mixture of ridiculous comedy and death-defying tragedy. We all nearly drowned, twice - and the play really reflects that”.

‘Atlantic Ladies – The Play’ is at Neuadd Dyfi on Friday, 17 May and The Dragon Theatre in Barmouth on Saturday, 18 May at 7.30pm.

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