SHOPPING AROUND     by Perkin Warbeck

Shop Street is perhaps the most celebrated of streets in Galway City. If the truth were told and retailed.

In recent times this thoroughfare has contributed greatly to the gaiety of the nation by the al fresco antics of the street-performance group known as Macnas.

This group is instantly recognisable by the big, box-like heads worn by the performers.

‘Macnas’ tranlates as ‘romping and horseplaying’ whch just about ticks this particular horse box.

Galway City aka the City of the Tribes, is also celebrated by another theatrical establishment, Druid Theatre, which adheres to a more conventional and traditional format, i.e. indoor performance under a rainproof roof, if not a Proscenium Arch itself.

By way of contrast there is nothing at all of the Big Head about the Director . who controls this magical, wandering outfit with her ‘slat draíochta’ or wand.

Its modest moving spirt is affectionately known as The Druidess , about whom there is nothing of the big, box-like head, was all over the shop of late, broadcasting-wise.

The Perkin (as part of his best-practice Return to Play Protocol) was glad to lend an ear to the dulcet delivery of the Druidess, for the alternative on the airwaves was truly too unsconscionable.

To wit, the Steak Knives were truly out for the – quel surprise- the Shinners, the would-be Water-Boarders. From Fergal O’Dowd of Fianna Fail Better muttering about – what one thought at first was –gadzooks ! – the Dub-Mon bombings – but on second hearing was actually ‘the Le Mon bombing’.

Whch was a reassuring reminder that Normal Service had been resumed and that there is No New Departure under contemplation by the Azure Blouses.  While from the Fuhrer of Fianna Failure aka The Martian was rabbiting on about, like, Sinn Fein/ IRA, going forward.

Roll on, one says, the Centenary of the Civil War when the stones, the stones! the stones !! will be rolled out and the Morsupials will hop , slither and jump out to indicate precisely whence their Moral Superiority sprang. Springtime in Ballyseedy, as it were.

The reason why the Druidess was all over the Broadcasting Shop for there was a new production of an old favorutie to be flogged:

-The Beatuy Queen of Leenane

Curiously enough, both Garry Hynes (for it is also she!) and the Finest Mind of the Free Southern Stateen were attached to the Abbey Theatre in the early 90s, the former as Artistic Director, the latter as Literary Editor.

Indeed, narky Archeologists of the Thespian Arts on Liffeyside date this specific period to the replacement of the Green by the, erm, Pink Room in the (sclog) Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann.

D’imprimatur is given by Arch Wishbone Fintan O Toole, who writes n his profoundly pofaced preface to the collected edish of Martin McDonagh’s Nama-style Drama :

-Connemara, were the plays are set , is supposed to be a Gaeltacht, an official preserve of native Gaelic speech. But in McDonagh’s language Gaelic is just a pale ghost behind the vernacular English of the characters, its dead forms clinging on to an empty afterlife in the baroque sytnax of their speech. Where a Gaelic word like ‘gasur’ (boy) intrudes on the dialogue, it serves only to remind us of an absent, half-forgotgten tongue’.

This is the Tony Cascarino-isation of Theatre, the Ray ‘Hoots Mon’ Houghtonography of the Higher Hiberno-irishy. The triumph of FAI-lure in the non-footie Foot Lights.

This really puts the Dim into D’imprimatur. The old lie of the land of West Britain:

-Listen up, Planet Earth ! We Paddies have taken the English Language and MADE. IT. OUR. VERY. OWN.

That sort of oft-repeated foible of Fintan that Goebbels himself might well have gagged over. Not only that but this is a, erm, Fake-up Call. So much so that it had the effect of compelling The Perkin’s inner Billy Cotton-picker to utter his never to be forgotton war-cry:

-Fakey ! Fakey !

Consider the following: for more decades than one could hope to pour a flagon of Lucozade over Fintan O’Toole has been drooling over his preschool discovery and pet theory ennui that (gasp)

– England was urban; so Ireland had to create an image of itself that was exclusively rustic.

Eh?

This is, sadly, the kind of blue-chip twaddle which gives even Camp Twaddell a good name. Coming as it does from the (gulp) European Commentator of the Year 2017 (for it is still he!) who was bred, born and brought up in a Dublin 12 suburb called Crumlin.

One of a (gasp) rosary of skinflint suburbs which was wrapped around the waist of the Free Southern Stateen’s capital city in the pre-Dort Forties and consisting entirely of romantic concrete blocks which were, erm, exclusively rustic.

Contrast that with the tush-push gush which the Fine-minded Fintan lavished on the Conemara cow-dung drama from the biro of a ‘Orse and Cart Cockney in tones that are fustian, in tones that are combustion, cultural like.

And folk still wonder why he is referred to (in awed tones) as the CCC: Crumlin’s Cerebral Contortionist.

Meanwhile, back on Radio Land, The Looty Queen of Inane, trailing clouds of global glory, dropped her her demi-contralto voice an octave or two even as she modestly desbribed the wonderful reception whch The Beauty Queen of Leenane received in Hong Hong (or as we neo-colonialists like to call it: Honkers).

Where, seemingly, the ‘Beauty Queen of Leenane’ was presented in Hip-hip-hooray Hiberno-English while a translation into Chinese (Mandarin? Cantonese? – the Druidesss was not specific) was simultaneously provided.

That it received a standing ovation at the end of the show was down, according to the Druidess, to its:

-Universality.

Hmmm.

The Perkin can well believe it: some ten years before this HK production and some ten years after the original Gaeity production one found oneself on a bus journey from Shanghai to Huangshan/Yellow Mountain.

On the way – amazing how empty the Chinese countryside can be – – not unlike an auditoruim at a (gulp) media-ignored Druid Prodcution – when we did encounter a most peculiar ‘Géill Slí !:, in the form of yellow-toothed peasant lady plus cow.

Suddenly the peak-capped driver found itself swerving to avoid the duo.. Madame Hei U ! stood her ground in front of the bus and with clenched fist gave him some yellow welly for a velly long time while the indifferent cow grazed nonchalantly away on the roadside grass, swishing her tail in tempo to keep the flies at bay..

Whatever it was Madame Hei U ! was screeching it sounded suspiciously repetitious, even unto evoking memoreis of Mag the Harridan’s monologue in The Beauty Queen of Leenane:

Mag the Harridan:

-‘Me porridge is gone cold now. Me porridge is gone cold now. Me porridge is gone cold now’

Universality, is right.

(Incidentally, one of the Druidess’s proudest memories if of the time she brought DruidSynge on a tour of the Aran Islands. It is not recorded that a simultaneously Leprechaun translation was provided).

Modestly, the Druidess then mentoned, en passant, after sweping the boards of Broadway with ‘The Beuty Queen of Leenane, that (gasp) Martin McDonagh was now the second most produced playwright in the Land of Aunt Samantha, next only to The Great Shakes himself.

Re-spect.

To semi-conclude with a Multiple Choice queston. It features three random selcted passages from the works of both Martin McDonanagh and William Shakespeare. The three McDonagh plays are : The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West. The three Shakespeare plays are: Meaure for Measure, A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Macbeth.

Here then are the six passages, promiscuously positioned, three from McDonagh, three from Shakespeare. Let the long-suffering reader decide from which dramatist’s oeuvre each passage is chosen:

1.

This house does smell of pee, this house does.

Em, cats do get in.

Do cats get in?

They do. They do go to the sink.

What do they go to the sink for?

To wee.

To wee? They go to the sink to wee? Sure, that’’s mnighty good of them. You do get a very considearate breed of cat up this way so.

2.

“But man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”

3.

We should have music as we’re doing this.

Music, music.

Music to hammer dead fellas to. I have a Dana record somewhere..

Put Dana on so.

(Puts on ‘All Kinds of Everything’ by Dana).

I don’t think young people liked Dana nowadays.

They may not but I do. I’ve liked Dana since I was a child. If I met Dana I’d give her a kiss.

She wouldn’t be kissing you, ya get.

For why?

Why wouldn’t Dana be kissing you?

Aye.

Well maybe she would, now.

On the lips.

Maybe she would.

Although she’s a born-again Christian now.

4.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with some care, that he may prove
More fond on her than she upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

5.

It’s always the best ones to hell. Me, probably straight to heven I’ll go, even though I blew the head off poor dad. So long as I go confessing to it anyways. That’s the good thng about being Catholic. You can shoot our dad in the head and it doesn’t even matter at all.

Well it matters a little bit.

It matters a little bit but not a big bit.

Did you see Girleen crying her eyes out, the funeral?

I did.

Poor Girleen. And her mam two times has had to drag her screaming from the lake at night, did you hear, where Father Welsh jumped, and her just standing there, staring.

She must’ve liked Father Welsh or something.

I suppose she must’ve. (Taking out Girleen’s chain). She wouldn’t take her chaineeen back at all. She wouldn’t hear tell of it. I’ll put it up here with his letter to us.

It’s the mental they’ll be putting Girleeen in beroe long if she carries on.

Sure it’s only a matter of time.

Isn’t that so?

Awful sad. Ah, well.

6.

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
Thou marvel’st at my words: but hold thee still.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
So, prithee, go with me.

Tricky, eh? To pick which is which, every which way.

:Let Shakespeare look to his laurels. Little surprise that McDonagh is snapping at his heels.

All hail, the Druidess !

Re-spect.

To conclude: as one started with a Shop perhaps it might be next door to neat to finish on the,erm, Shop Floor.

One of the myriad programmes which the Radioactive Druidess appeared on was on Newstalk.

-And your next choice of song is….?

Thus was Mss Airhead of the Airwaves when confronted with a simple song title in the Leprechaun responds:

-Fead an Iolair.

The reason why the modest Druidesss requested this traditional Irish tune is because it was played at her wedding to Martha in the solemn surrounds (gasp) Druid.

-F-f-f …you’ll have me out here.

The Druidess was only too happy to oblige.

-Fead an Urláir.

Eh?

After The Perkin had picked himself off the floor his Inner Currency Manipulator began to process that answer.

‘Fead an Iolair’ translates as ‘The Eagle’s Whistle; whereas ‘Fead an Urlair’ transaltes as ‘The Floor’s Whistle’.

How could this be? During her spells in the Land of Aunt Samantha, the radioactive Looty Queen of Innane will have come across – handled, perhaps – currency with an eagle, a bald eagle on it.

Perhaps, the Floor / Urlár dimension is a colloquial synonym for:

-The Bottom Line?

What was it that d’Imprimatur intoned?

-it serves only ot remind us of an absent, half-forgotten tongue.

How about trying: , fully forgotten, Fintan?.

Just give Fine-minded Fintan of the Druid Bodily Fluid, the tools and there’s little doubt but that he’d finish the job, dramatically..