Domination on the global scale is what Druid Theatre is destined to revel in even as it takes ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ on a tour of the intercontinental highway.
First of all it will stage this modern master/mistresspiece in a multiplicity of metropoli on a coast to coast tour of the (gulp, would be) Land of Aunt Samantha. To drum up some pre-publicity on the home front (!) for this adventurous foreign venture that cherished National Treasure and She-Director of Druid Theatre embarked on a studio crawl in the uber-compliant DOBland media.
To hear her boast to boast about this hum-dinger piece de resistance of pond-scum drama, it seems as if her and her theatre’s revels will never be ended.
-750 thousand squids.
That was the flat-heeled matter-of-factual reply that Gary Hynes (for it is she !) gave when asked how much modest moola her theatrical baby was in annual receipt of from the curse-of-God public purse.
The harrowing interrogation continued:
-And from whose wheel-barrow , pray, will the surplus dosh derive for to fund the extra costs involved in this vital c. vulture venture?
-Culture Ireland.
Was the ho-hum response from the downbeat Druidess to the humdrum query regarding the unearned income the Druid Theatre is receiving to tour ‘The Booty, oops, the Beauty Queen of Leenane’ in its ambiton to girdle the globe. As a throwaway comment, the Leading Lady of Thespian Ireland remarked, almost as an afterthought, how they would be crossing the Pacific, having effortlessly conquered the US of A, to play – gong ! – Hong Kong.
Mother Russia sends its Bolshoi Ballet Company abroad to boost its cultural creidt and to pass muster with the pas de deux demi monde by performing such resplendent pieces as the Nutcracker and Swan Lake by the beauty queens of Leningrad.
A class of propaganda de Pavlova, designed to provide the rest of the world with its just culutral desserts conisisting of an eye-delightful merignue tart with a crisp crust, a soft interior and normally tipped with fruits and optionally, whipped cream.
-Roll over Beethoven, tell the Tchaivovsky news.
Mother Ireland sends a Bullsh Pally Company abroad, conisting of Complan. We meek , post-colonial, compliant Pats are often accused of being too prone to turn the other cheek:
-We just don’t Complan enough .
Well, world, stand by for this dramatic compilation, of Complan.
So, just what is it about this Irish theatrical tour de force that the unsuspecting world is about to be seduced so extravagantly by ? And which will provide such a boost to our already heady standing as the land of grand drama entirely.
Well, for starters, ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ could scarcely wish for a better send off than the (gulp) imprimatur of none other than Archishop Fintan O’Toole himself. Hyperventilating about the dramatist of Irish stock who was born and brought up in a tower block in Southwark, London.
-The children of Irish emigrants, growing up with all the accents and attitudes of urban England are finding or making their own connections with Irish cutlure. In sport, it is Jack Charlton’s Irish soccer teeam of the late 1980’s. In the theatre now it is Martin McDonagh.
Eh?
Somewhere a smoke alarm is beginning to sound. One’s nostrils begin to twitch, if actually stopping short of the verb, to twiddle. Truly is this Thameside dramatist the Elephant and Castle in the contemporary Irish green room, and the way he might make Southwark a remake of the Southern Irish Stateen..
-Wanting to develop a style of dialogue as strange and heightened as those of David Mamet or Harold Pinter but yet free of their obvious influence, he returned to the rhythms and structures, the twists and elisions of Irish speech.
Eh?
Cue, twaddle. Stand by, twiddle (see above).
Can this be the same playwright who was guilty of the playacting which one went to see when it was staged in the Gaiety back in the 90s, as a guest of a friend who knows a friend who’s in the way of furnishing freebies?
At the interval The Perkin’s inner thesp was sorely tempted to bolt as indeed was one’s friend. But out of deference to his own freebie-sourcing friend one’s friend opted to stay put and grin, and bear it, barely. One did ditto, out of deference to one’s friend. The future for the freebie had to be secured.
Here’s a very early sample of the sparkling dialgoue between daughter (40) and mother (70) in Connemara from the first scene :
Mag: You do make me Complan nice and smooth. (Pause). Not a lump at all, nor the comrade of a lump.
Maureen: You don’t give it a good stir is what enough stir is what you don’t do.
Mag: I gave it a good enough stir and there was still lumps.
And so on and on, and on does this lumpy splodge of undramatic sludge its way to a route-one, drag of a nill-all conclusion.
Sound familiar? That’s it: the kind of play which J. Charlton so delighted the charlatans of the footie press on Liffeyside with his brand of dour, horsepower hoofing , they were propelled into a dozen year-long binge of bucklepping, a-buzz with obsequiousness. Which has continued to this day, going forward.
Tune in any day of the week and listen to a supine Matt ‘The Hoople’ Cooper on Newstalk fm brownosing those Martin McDonaghs of Irish footie, renowned for their ability to lump the long ball, Tony Cascarino ( of the East Ender accent) and Mark Lawrenceson (of Coronation Street intonations ) as they over do the ‘we’ when discussing ‘our’ Irish footie team’s prospects.
To paraphrase the sublime Paul Simon:
-Still coining it after all these years.
The play, meanwhile, plods along as it puts the patrons (both paying and free-loading) under pressah with this kind of jack-ass jive-talk from its charlatan characters, unpickable on an English stage. Instance such as this randomly chosen passage of play from deep in the second half:
Ray: If it was getting rid of ould lumps I was to be, it wouldn’t be with Complan I’d be starting. It would be much closer to home, boy. Oh aye, much closer. A big lump sitting in an ould fecking rockin-chair it would be. I’ll tell you that !
Mag: (pause) Or, a Cup-a-Soup do me.
Over now to match analyist par excellence , FOT of Footlights Footie fame:
-And what matters in the end is that McDonagh is more than just a very clever theatrical stylist. His trick and turns have a puropse. They are bridges over a deep pit of sympathy and sorrow, illuminated by a tragic vision of stunted and frustrated lives. Moments of love and loss, of yearning and even of faith catch the light now and then.
And folk still wonder how, why or cén fath Jack Charlatan was awarded the Freedom of Dublin City and Mayfly fishing rights on the Moy for life (or even byeond) by the myopic Mayoists in the West and the grouchy Marxists in the Mansion House of Dublin, West Britannia.
In 1991, incidentally, at the Abbey Theatre / Amharclann Náisúnta na hEireann, Fintan O Toole held the postion of (gulp) Artistic Adviser while its Artistic Director was (gasp) Gary Hynes, Bachelor of Arts.
The identical same Abbey Theatre/ Amharclann Náisiútna na hEireann which has just come off staging its measured contirbution to the celebratory commemoration to the Easter Rising thingy by inflicting six weeks of a six-county ‘Observe the Young Guns of Ulster marching towards the Huns’ by Frank McGuinness, Bachelor of Arts.
This is the BA officers’ messterpiece in which P. Pearse, the insufferable insurrectionist, is dissed almost to death before being finally and summarily dismissed in the Stonebreakers’ Yard at Kill ‘n Main ‘em.
Maureen: Well, can I help lumpy?
Mag: No.
Maureen: Write to the Complan people so, if it’s lumpy.
What exactly did Hong Kong do to deserve the threathened Typhoon Complan ? One can only hope t twill be downgraded to Tropical Storm Camplan by the time it makes landfill in Happy Velley. Fangs and fingers crossed.
Time will tell, of course. And time being money, the moola will be duly poneyed up by Thady Taxpayer the Theatre Lover in the Green Room of Grand Guignol.
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