BY CIARAN TIERNEY

Galway singer and actress Aoife Mulholland is set to revive her starring role in a West End musical next week despite an astonishing on-line attack from the actress who has played her role since Aoife took maternity leave just over a year ago.

The 33-years-old Salthill native will return to the role of Brooke Wyndham in Legally Blonde for the last eight weeks of its run at London’s Savoy Theatre after taking time off for the birth of her first child. The show is due to end on April 7.

Aoife is scheduled to return to the Savoy stage next Tuesday, February 7, but her former understudy Tamara Wall used Twitter to start up an astonishing spat which has been picked up by elements of the British media.

Ms Wall even branded Aoife, brother of Galway football manager Alan, as “nasty” in one tweet – which was subsequently deleted – after discovering on Thursday that the original star of the show intended to return for the last eight weeks of its run.

She has played the part since Ms Mulholland went on maternity leave in December 2010.

“Devastated does not come close to how I feel right now,” tweeted Ms Wall. “I can’t believe that someone would do that to another person.”

Aoife, who is visiting her family in Galway this week, said that she had informed the producers in December that she intended to return to work next month.

“I am flabbergasted about what has happened, but I do not want to get drawn into a slanging match,” she said.

Later, Ms Wall backed down from her attacks on the Galway woman and said she was just “sad to leave a great show”.

Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel