by Tim Bradford
That Tuesday afternoon in Gort it had been raining. It was raining now, too, as we passed through north Clare. I saw another sign and started singing the Christy Moore song, ‘Lisdoonvarna’). I always get excited when I recognise a placename that appears in a well-known song. I remember being at the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival once – not for me, oh God no, no no no, just there with friends, oh yes, ha ha, checking out the scene and all that. A few of us stood at the bar of the Ritz Hotel in the market square and ordered pints. The place was full of eager old lads, mostly farmers probably, of weird shape and mien. One of our crowd, a pretty young guard called Carmel, had had her fortune told and it has said she’d meet three older men who’d change her life, so was on the lookout. Every time a group of three men were spotted, she and her friend (who always carried a pair of knickers and toothbrush in her handbag ‘just in case’) would grab each others’ arms and go ‘wwooooooorrrr’. I didn’t think they were treating the Festival with the respect it deserved. They scanned the talent voraciously – being a guard, Carmel was hoping that the promise of handcuffs and uniform would be a winner. ‘Gets the blokes going, you know.’ Er, no, I said. After a few more pints she’d said, ‘I’m looking for a beast, a big bad man.’ I asked her why and she wasn’t quite sure how to explain it. She said she’d written to the organiser, Willie Daly, and told him she was rich with a good career and ‘wanted a beast, simple as that’. The last I remember of that night was the bizarre sight of some farmers with heads the size of small cars getting in nicely with a group of satin-dressed young lovelies, while I tried to do ‘beast’ impressions to the unimpressed police-woman.
The Italian tourist had finished her magazine and was staring straight ahead. We were nearly there. I saw a sign for Galway and thought of humming the entire James Galway back catalogue to myself. Then I realised the only thing I knew was ‘Annie’s Song’. I suddenly felt lonely and was already getting tired of trying to be Irish. But I looked forward to seeing The Lonesome West, a play by Martin MacDonagh, tomorrow as part of the Arts Festival with some theatrical non-alehead, civilised people, followed by a quiet stroll around the beautiful little city.
* * *
1 Gort is Gaelic for field.
2 Of course, the same thing would have happened if the skinny alien guy in a baggy spacesuit whose name I can’t remember had turned up with his metal pal in my old home town in the early eighties. He’d have got duffed up by a crowd of denim-clad bikers after the pubs had shut and that would be that – all-out intergalactic war.
Conversations with the Future Foreign Correspondent of the Irish Times
The Galway Arts Festival
Galway1 is a mad city of torque brooches and armbands and fourteen-year-old Italian and French students in identical garish waterproof jackets eating sandwiches in Kennedy Park and waiting for something to happen, but it never will, unless by ‘something’ they mean being accosted and then weed on by a bearded drunkard who smells of cumin powdery BO, devilled kidneys and Special Brew.2 It’s a city of didgeridoo buskers, hair wrappers with mousy beards and little round specs from nice families in England (most likely from towns like Salisbury or Norwich, gentle souls who did an Arts degree, got a nice job, went a bit ‘crazy’ then decided to find themselves in their mid thirties – got a young European girlfriend and just took off, man). A city of long-nosed pensioners with red speckled cheeks, of wild-haired arts undergraduates, baggy-eared Gaelic footballers and craft shop workers with nervous eyes and unpublished poetry in their coat pockets. It’s a city of great creativity, with all the detritus that entails, but also a party town of beer and music and fishing boats and estate agents.
I’m there smack bang in the middle of the Arts Festival. And Galway is a town full of people who love the arts. The Arts are lovely, that’s what people in Galway would say. I had arrived to see The Lonesome West, playing for just one more night at the famous Druid Theatre just off Quay Street.
What is an ‘Arts’ festival?
Perhaps first of all one should ask the question ‘What is Art?’ After that question has been asked it should probably be answered. But not by me. I haven’t a clue. I only got an E in my Art A-Level so am probably not qualified. I had actually put the question to the ever-knowledgeable Terry one night earlier that year. He is a handy walking dictionary as well as being a useful moral philosopher and a grade C A-Level artist to boot, the bastard.
‘Art is the physical creation of a mental concept,’ he declared with a-hundred-per-cent confidence. I asked him to say it again, so I could write it down.
‘Art,’ he said, in his drunken attempt at gravitas, ‘is the physical creation of a mental concept.’ So, Terry, if I developed the concept of hitting someone then carried it out physically, would that be Art? Terry looked perturbed then said ‘yes’ because he had to look after his new theory. This was his baby now. No matter, it was a definition and I wasn’t about to split hairs.
What is a festival?
Is this for the German market? Whatever – a festival, er, it’s a sort of party I suppose, where like-minded people get together, sometimes in a field (as in rock festival) or a grimy fifties’ classroom in North Wales (literary festival). Or a damp wooden church hall on the outskirts of a small village in the East Midlands (harvest festival). The common denominator is a central concept (‘Art!’ – quiet, Terry) that everyone is into, plus unadulterated fun and laughter (particularly in the case of harvest festivals).
Review – The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh is the new Brendan Behan (without the drink problem), the new John B. Keane (without the pub), and the new Sean O’Casey (without having W. B. Yeats as a pal). I’d never seen one of his plays and I don’t know what he looks like3 but I know he’s younger than me and very talented so naturally I’m really jealous.4 McDonagh became hot in London around 1996 with his Leenane Trilogy, of which The Lonesome West was a part. This is reckoned to be his best play so far, about two brothers squabbling over possessions and territory in a small house in the West of Ireland, after their father has died. There’s an alcoholic priest and a tease of a girl in there too. McDonagh is reasonably famous but in the tabloid world of the UK it’s not so much for his plays as for getting into a barney with Sean Connery5 about something or other. Maybe he called the actor a bald rich supercilious old git or something. Or perhaps he was simply rude.
Anyway, every goatee-bearded culturally copped-on arts tourist in town was hatching plans to see his play at the Druid Theatre, clucking in their gregarious coteries in O’Neachtain’s, Galway’s bohemian, ‘flamboyant’ old-style pub on Quay Street, about new Irish Theatre and The Arts. Being fatally drawn to large groups of clucking art pseuds (it goes back to a crush I had on a denim clad left-wing drama teacher when I was thirteen), I couldn’t stop myself legging it down to the Festival box office to book a seat.
The Festival box office was just off Quay Street, the cobbled medievelesque main shopping thoroughfare in the city. I stopped briefly at the windows outside where there was an exhibition of drawings by Tom Matthews,6 whose style I recognised. They were all reasonably funny, particularly one, which made me roar with laughter: a bloke is talking to someone on a mobile phone while having sex with a goose, with sheaves of paper between him and the squawking bird. The caption reads, ‘I’m just having a gander through your CV as we speak.’ OK, so it’s not exactly sophisticated, but it had a certain charm. Well, not even charm so much as a really corny play on words. I’ve never been into the idea of buying original art, except from charity shops, or from friends who are eager but skint, but I decided I had to have the ‘I’m Having A Gander Through Your CV …’ no matter what the cost, dammit (actually £50 unframed).
I walked in feeling like Charles Saatchi, about to add to my collection.
(Scene – arts festival box office in a West of Ireland city)
Arts Tourist: (Staring at the intelligent-looking short-haired woman behind the counter and smiling in an
enigmatic artsy sort of way) I’d like to buy the cartoon of the bloke having sex with a goose.
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: Ha ha ha – is that right?
Arts Tourist: (Puffing out chest in Arts Patron fashion) No, really. (Clever-looking short-haired box-office woman goes off for a minute or two. There is laughter off stage then she returns, smiling.)
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: Right you are, OK, I see what you mean. It is about sex with a goose, isn’t it. I think you’d need to talk to Tom Matthews himself. He’s due to pop in in about half an hour – you could meet him.
Arts Tourist: (Arching eyebrows) I’d like that.
(Scene – a coffee bar in a West of Ireland city. A dishevelled traveller sits at an outside table staring at a cup of tea. Occasionally he sips from the tea then takes a watch out of his pocket, then continues staring at the tea. This goes on for half an hour. The figure then places some money on the table and gets up and leaves.)
(Scene – arts festival box office in a West of Ireland city)
Arts Tourist: (Staring at the intelligent-looking short-haired woman behind the counter) I’ve come to meet Tom Matthews the cartoonist. I want to buy one of his drawings. The cartoon of the bloke having sex with a goose.
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: Ha ha ha – that’s the cartoon of a man having sex with a goose, yeah?
Arts Tourist: Hmmm.
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: Well he was in here just now but he’s just gone down the pub – you might catch him.
Arts Tourist: Which way did he go?
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: That way.
(And so the chase begins. Arts Tourist leaves and walks down the street then stops and winces, looks down at the pavement then walks back quickly to the arts festival box office.)
(Scene – arts festival box office in a West of Ireland city)
Arts Tourist: (Staring at the intelligent-looking short-haired woman behind the counter) Erm, this Tom Matthews … what does he, er, look like?
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: He’s got white hair and a moustache and has a red scarf. Ha – ye can’t miss him!
(Scene – the first pub down from the box office. A bloke with a moustache is drinking alone. Arts Tourist goes up to him and looks around for his scarf. There is no scarf.)
Arts Tourist: Awww.
(Scene – out in the street two guys standing, one, flamboyant and with a red scarf but no moustache)
Arts Tourist: Are you a cartoonist?
‘Flamboyant’ Red Scarf Man: No, I am from the Netherlands.7
Ah, Eurohumour – sure, you couldn’t make it up. After several more fruitless searches in the pubs around Quay Street I decided to call it a day and went back to the box office. The intelligent woman behind the counter told me they’d get in touch with Tom Matthews and find out what to do and I could pick up the cartoon the next morning. I saw this as a success of sorts. (Yess, ha ha, victory to the intrepid arts festival goer! Arts Tourists 1 – Box Office 0! To O’Neachtain’s we will repair, for ales and jigs!)
I then wandered back out onto the main drag and saw a couple of bedraggled figures sitting at the side of the street selling henna tattoos. They were sort of gooey brown and apparently would last a week or so.8 I made up the design myself, a sort of squiggly Celtic sun in the style of a five-year-old with delirium tremens.9 Was it ‘art’? I had had the mental concept and she had physically created it. The couple was from Mexico City and were travelling around Europe painting squiggly shitty lines onto people’s arms – for cash! Clever, marketing-savvy bastards. I’ve been to Mexico City, I said. Very busy. Lots of Volkswagen Beetles driven by maniacs. Ah, but Mexico City is beautiful, said the grave, pale-faced young man: the sun and sky, the mountains, the people are happy, it is paradise, it is lovely. The Mexicans said they were here for the festival and might watch some theatre later because that was what they loved. Theatre in Mexico City was beautiful, poetic, it was lovely, it was butterflies floating around your head, it was … but my mind had wandered off – Theatre! Greasepaint! Curtains! Er, remembering lines! Intervals with drinks! Air kisses at the after-show party! Iconoclastic young playwrights! The Lonesome West! I legged it back to the Arts Centre to get a ticket. On the way I passed a tacky-looking boozer with a red flyer in the window, on which was written details of the Miss Galway competition way over on the other side of town in Salthill. I laughed the hearty laugh of a seasoned theatregoer. It seemed a bit pathetic and ridiculous that they’d have something like that on in ‘Arts’ week.
Of course, I hadn’t booked. That would be far too unspontaneous, or should I say ‘intelligent, organised and mature’ for someone whose great-great-grandfather was a horseperson.
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: Hello again. What can I do for you this time?
I explained everything. There were no tickets left, she said, with pity yet also some surprise that a fan of graphic representations of goose-buggering would also have an interest in the theatre. What a Renaissance man, she was probably thinking. If only I wasn’t stuck here behind this counter that guy might show me the world!
Clever-looking Short-haired Box-office Woman: You could go to the Druid theatre to check if there’s any cancellations.
At the theatre the woman in front of me asked if there were any tickets for The Lonesome West.
‘No we’ve sold out.’
‘Oh how embarrassing.’
It was my go. Like a deaf lemming, I too asked if there were any tickets for The Lonesome West.
‘No,’ she said patiently, as if speaking to somebody very stupid, ‘as I said to the lady just now, we’ve sold out.’
I had to try to find Tom Matthews the cartoonist now. After all, it was really all his fault that I’d missed out on The Lonesome West. If I didn’t get him then my whole visit would have been wasted. This is an arts festival. Cartoons are art. I wandered around various pubs and cafés, thinking that a guy with white hair and flamboyant red scarf can’t just go and hide in a little place like this. But he did. So I decided to go and see something else and wrote on my hand to remind myself to turn up tomorrow.
(Scene – the Box Office again. A clever-looking long-haired woman is now behind the desk)
Arts Tourist: Look, I need to see a play or some art or something – are there any other plays on tonight?
Clever-looking Long-haired Woman: Well, there’s Dancing at Lughnasa.
Arts Tourist: (Stroking chin and nodding slowly) Ahmmm ahmmmm. Where’s that on?
Clever-looking Long-haired Woman: Some church hall at the edge of the city.
Arts Tourist: Right, I’ll have a ticket then.
Clever-looking Long-haired Woman: None left, you’ll have to go down there.
Dancing at Lughnasa
This is a play set in 1930s rural Ireland about a summer festival, pagan dancing, repression and all that jolly stuff. I trudged down to some hall on the outskirts of town, passing joggers and dog walkers and leaving behind the tie-dye mystical ponytailedness of the town centre, into the suburbs. A woman with a kid stopped her car and asked where she could find the venue for Dancing at Lughnasa. We wandered up and down the respectable street until we found a padlocked church hall. She sort of cursed in a very well-brought-up way, then got in her car and drove off. I hung around for a while for no particular reason, thinking about what to do next. A film had just been made of the play, starring Meryl Streep. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about Meryl Streep for years and now she turned up twice in the space of about sixty pages. You just can’t write her off. I walked slowly back into town.
On my way back in I passed one of the town’s music pubs, near a place where the river sort of splits in two, guarded by a lonely-looking telephone box. Mike Peters was playing that night. Mike Peters from The Alarm. What was their song? ‘68 Guns’? ‘22-Gun Salute’? ‘The Guns of Brixton’? (Actually, I know that that wa
s by the Clash.) The Alarm didn’t really look like pop stars if my memory is correct. Ugly lads with positive punk hairdos. No, it was bigger than that, it was eighties Pop Big Hair. Why was hair so big back then? The eighties was full of these sorts of enthusiastic but limited bands, lots of passion but somehow the attitude was all wrong. In another era, say the mid to late nineties, they’d have been allowed to get away with being dressed like brickies. But in the mid eighties they had to look like outrageous hairdressers or no-one would buy their records. What a crazy time. Whatever I might have thought of Mike Peters I decided this was the arts event for me. I would return.
The Spanish Conceptual Art Pieces
Further into town I popped into the Arts Centre, wondering if they might have any tickets for anything. This turned out to be very different from the Arts Festival box office, like some old council offices that have been turned into gallery space. Upstairs was a fine exhibition of photographs by Martin Parr taken on a day at the Galway races – lots of outdoor fill-in flash character studies. Downstairs was a selection of Spanish conceptual pieces. There was only me in there until a scruffy little family walked in. The dad stood proudly in his vest and tracksuit trousers as the kids and his missus wandered around the works looking bewildered. He was not sure what was going on (like me) but knew it was good that they were there – he’d done his bit in the culture wars. I had an uplifting feeling as this little patriarch made his bid for family self-improvement. They traipsed out reasonably quickly with raised eyebrows as if to say, ‘What was that lump of shite all about?’ Ah but what do I know about people, patronising git that I am – he was probably an installation artist himself come to check out the opposition.