Eamon Kelly

by Eamon Kelly

  On St Bridget’s Eve the young men and women of that locality dressed in the most outlandish clothes they could find, the men often in women’s attire and the young women maybe in their fathers’ Sunday suits. To make recognition more difficult they masked their faces with pieces of old lace curtain and pulled their hats down over their eyes. The evening before, they had sculpted a face on a turnip, with the eyes and the mouth deeply incised and the inside of the turnip scooped out. They put a lighting candle into it. In the dark the light coming through the eyes and the mouth looked eerie. The sculpted head was fixed on a broom handle with a bar across to hold a coat, and with a headscarf and a skirt the effigy of Bridget called an Brídeóg was taken from house to house. When the mummers and the musicians came to the storyteller’s house the floor was cleared, the music struck up and they danced Gáirdín na Nóinín (‘The Garden of Daisies’). The Brídeóg, not the Christian Bridget who built the church in Kildare, but a priestess of the ancient druids, was held high and money was collected.

  In the house that night you had all the rude elements of the theatre. The storyteller provided the comedy and sometimes the tragedy, for he could bring a tear as well as a laugh. All the basic ingredients were there: the music, the dance and the dressing up.

  Mícheál is now with all his neighbours in that eldorado in the skies, but the Irish spoken in his native Coomerkane is still to the good in his translation of A. E. W. Mason’s novel, Clementina.

  On the second day of February 1959 all heaven broke loose in Listowel with the production of a new play, Sive by John B. Keane. At first people didn’t know how to pronounce the word. They weren’t sure if it rhymed with ‘give’ or ‘hive’. It was of course the lovely Irish name Sadhbh, of which the diminutive is Saidhbhín, as in the town Cahirciveen. In the play the young schoolgirl, Sive of the title, is being traded off in marriage to an old toothless hill farmer. It is a tale of poverty and greed, of humour and tragedy, and has a show-stopping duo of travelling folk, Pats Bocock and his son Carthalawn – a singing and bodhrán-playing Greek chorus.

  The play was given a splendid production by Listowel Drama Group, directed by Brendan Carroll and with new people like Nora Relihan and Hilary Neilson. It won all before it at drama festivals and, because it was an all-Ireland winner at Athlone, the group was invited by the Abbey to play for a week at the National Theatre then at the Queen’s. Like the plays of Bryan MacMahon, Pauline Maguire and Sigerson Clifford, Sive drew crowds as Kingdom residents in the metropolis dipped into their savings and bought tickets to the theatre. If you had lost track of a Kerry relative, the Queen’s in Pearse Street was a likely place to meet him that week.

  Maura and I, who had come to Dublin seven years before, invited them all to our house one night after the show. Players and crew and friends filled our semi-detached in Coolock to bulging point. There was only one house of lords, and the gentlemen, considerate as ever, left that for the use of the ladies, while they, when the need arose, retired to the back lawn. They brought their conversation with them as they stood in a circle under a watery moon. In the weeks that followed, the wetted grass grew tall, lush and a shade of dark green, so that a little patch of Dublin was forever Listowel – maybe not forever, but for very many moons.

  ON THE RADIO

  When Maura and I came to Dublin to join the Radio Éireann Repertory Company in July 1952, we first stayed in an upstairs flat at Mountshannon Road in Rialto. The little kitchen where we cooked and dined overlooked the canal, and at that time boats drawn by horses on the tow-path passed by fairly often. Many is the morning, as I watched the lazy gait of the animal and the slow progress of the boat, I listened to Denis Brennan read the 9 a.m. news. It was Radio Éireann’s first venture into early morning broadcasting, brought about by a newspaper strike in Dublin. The radio was all right, one Dublin lady said, but you couldn’t put it around chips.

  The old couple who owned the house hadn’t an idea of where Maura and I worked, and when we were in a Sunday night play we rehearsed the script in the flat. Sometimes, carried away by the drama, we raised our voices, often in acrimony. We were once cast as the servant boy and the servant girl in a play, Michaelmas Eve by T. C. Murray. The characters had fallen in love but the servant boy through the scheming of his mother married the daughter of the house, no oil painting. Because of this the servant girl was livid, and when the pair were alone she gave full vent to her fury. Her language, often intemperate, contained threats like: ‘I could choke and strangle you!’ Hearing that row overhead the old couple were in trepidation, convinced that murder would soon be done under their roof!

  Finding them anxiously listening on the stairs when I opened the door one night, I thought I had better explain the situation. I felt that it strained their credulity quite a bit to hear that we were actors on the wireless, and that our raised voices meant that we were practising our lines. Going to the studio that Sunday evening, I left the radio page of the Sunday paper with the play and the time of the broadcast marked on it on the hall table. When they heard the key in the door on our return that night the man and his wife were in the hall to greet us. They brought us into the sitting-room and made coffee. What they couldn’t get over was that the voices they were listening to now had been on the radio a short time before. They were thrilled, they said, but I think what pleased them most was that the voices they had heard raised in anger upstairs weren’t real after all.

  We had two ardent fans while we were in that house. Of course they were sometimes disappointed because we didn’t always have as big a part as we had in Michaelmas Eve. Sometimes, as in rep work, it was only a walk-on. The man of the house, after he had heard me in a few bit parts, advised me when I was next on the radio to hold my place at the microphone and not let the Dublin lads shoulder me off it!

  Radio Éireann at that time occupied the attic of the General Post Office overlooking Henry Street and Moore Street. Through sound-baffled windows you could see the great mounds of oranges and cabbages in the traders’ stalls below. Seagulls sat on the window-sills, and by the vigorous movements of their beaks they seemed to be protesting loudly at the content of the material being broadcast. There were two studios, one large and one not so large, with drapes sagging from the rafters and collar braces to improve the sound. Here all our work as actors was done, Sunday night and midweek plays, short stories, reading the linking scripts in music programmes, G. O. Sherrard’s gardening account, and Sports Stadium. I figured prominently in this last, giving voice to the report from the south. Reading the Dublin report one evening, an actor not fully au fait with GAA clubs called the Faughs ‘the Fucks’, which made for no mean hilarity in the Green Room and red faces in the balance and control. The balance and control was the large glass box between the two studios, where the sound engineer, the disc-man and the producer sat to regulate all activities in the studios.

  To get to these halls of merriment you entered the building at Henry Street, went up in the lift to the third floor and walked through a long corridor known as the ‘Wood of the Whispering’ (from a play of that name by M. J. Molloy). The administrative offices opened off each side of this passageway and heads of departments met there to discuss business. They lowered their voices as you approached in case they gave away any secrets. At the end of the corridor a narrow stairs brought you to a sort of lobby leading to the two studios.

  In this space there was always a policeman on duty during broadcast hours to guard against IRA infiltration. A monitor brought him the programmes as they went out. Thomas Studley, a leading actor in the Rep, was one night reading a very funny short story. He came out of the studio afterwards to find the guard in contortions of laughter. Beating his thigh in paroxysms of merriment he said to Tom, ‘In the Abbey you should be putting it over!’ Other guardians of the law took their duties a little more seriously. The newscaster Tom Cox told me that he had started the 8 a.m. bulletin one morning when a young man walked into the studio, sat down and put a revolver on the desk in fron
t of him. In the best traditions of the business, though the words were hopping off the page, Tom carried on and finished the news. Then on enquiry the young man told him he was a detective from the Special Branch sent to prevent the news being taken over by subversives. No standing outside for him. There is a saying in Irish, ‘If a goat goes to church, the altar is his destination!’

  Around this time, or maybe later, a very posh announcer came to Radio Éireann. The imperial timbre of his voice evoked echoes of the ascendancy calling from their carriages to the tradesmen in country towns. He was so grand that he put the cream of BBC newscasters in the shade. People protested. It was claimed that it wasn’t our own radio station any more, that it wasn’t redolent of its surroundings. Eventually the announcer left and became the presenter of a dry-cleaning-sponsored programme. The radio director, Maurice Gorham, was asked why the man had been relieved of his post, to which he replied, ‘We always send our best things to Imco!’

  Rumour had it that a newsreader went to confession in the Pro-Cathedral. She had been partying the night before. She knelt in the box, and because the penitent at the other side had such a long story to tell, she fell asleep. Suddenly the shutter came across with a clatter. She woke up and said, ‘Radio Éireann. Here is the news!’

  A newsreader in Irish placed his hat on the desk beside the microphone as he read and when he announced the death of a prominent citizen he raised his hat as he said, ‘May God have mercy on his soul!’

  Around 1954 we actors left our old haunts in the attic, came down the stairs, through the ‘Wood of the Whispering’ corridor, and turned the corner into new quarters facing O’Connell Street. The people who paid 3d to go to the top of Nelson’s Pillar could look in the windows at us going merrily down the passageway to the new studios. There were two, one large and one middle-sized, and several smaller cubicles for reading short stories, chat shows and disc jockey programmes. In contrast to the attic, everything was new except the floorboards, which creaked through the carpet and the sound was picked up by the large kidney-shaped microphones.

  We got to know where the mighty creaks were and avoided them. Sometimes in the run-through of a play one would forget, and producer Séamus Breathnach would shout from his glass box, ‘Merciful hour! Will you get off that creaking board!’ When actors in high spirits indulged in a little horseplay at rehearsals, Séamus once gave vent to an expression which has gone into radio folklore: ‘Will ye stop the acting and get on with the bloody play!’

  Mícheál Ó hAodha was head of drama and variety in the station and also produced plays. He was the first to use the new studios. And it was from them he directed the poetic plays of Pádraic Fallon. The Vision of Mac Conglinne, which had a Munster king with a hunger demon in his belly, I remember best. Sides of beef, legs of lamb and roasted piglets were washed down his gullet with churns of buttermilk. His queen, as odd as bedamned, swallowed a fly in a cup of whey and became pregnant. Fallon’s plays were an undoubted success, his language matching the outlandish imagery of the folktale.

  Mícheál produced a strange play called The Paddy Pedlar by M. J. Molloy. It was a one-act, meant for the stage, in which a near-demented man, the Pedlar, carried his dead mother on his shoulders in a sack, bringing her across forbidding landscapes to find her family burial place. A promise to the dead must be fulfilled. He talked to his mother in the sack and his cry of love for her was soul-searing, as was his simmering hatred for his cruel father who had brought her so much pain. In his voice the Pedlar endured again his mother’s suffering as he described how his father ‘fisted her down on the mouth!’ The part of the Pedlar was beautifully and frighteningly played by Éamon Keane. I was Uaisle, owner of the house where the Pedlar sought shelter on his journey. Uaisle was a step above his station, a man who put his words on edge, mimicking the verbal precision of his betters.

  Julia Monks, writing in the Irish Press on 22 November 1954, said, ‘One of the most remarkable things about the production – apart from the incandescent acting of Messrs Keane and Kelly – was the fact that if ever a play was written for the stage and not for radio this was it … How Mr Ó hAodha worked the trick of making us see – almost smell – what was going on defeats me. For it was by no means an acting, or “effects” job alone. It was let’s say, just magic – ever so slightly off white magic. Whatever happens don’t miss the repeat. And turn down the lights and hold on to your seats!’

  Radio drama in the days before the goggle-box took the spotlight off it!

  There were over twenty actors in the Rep, falling, because of their stage experience, into what I’ll call Gate and Abbey traditions. We had our Lady Bracknells and our Queen Gertrudes, our Bessie Burgesses and Widow Quins, our Ophelias and Pegeen Mikes. We had too our Joxer Dalys and our Old Mahons, our Mark Anthonys and Brutuses, our White-Headed Boys and our Playboys of the Western World. We were virtually an All-Ireland side, with actors from the city and from the regions, so that drama of town and country was presented with a deal of authenticity.

  Two actresses did their work in Irish and English, Maura O’Sullivan and Neasa Ní Annracháin. Eight actors appeared in plays and features in Irish, but in my opinion by far the most accomplished of us men was Niall Tóibín. Niall was a scholar of the language. He spoke mellifluous Munster Irish, and was equally at home in the other three dialects of Ireland. His mimicry in either language was only delightful. The bilingual actors were the hardest worked in the Rep. Frequently an actor who played the lead in the Sunday night play in English would appear again in the same role in the mid-week play in Irish.

  But for pontifical and dogmatic intonation, when God sat on the clouds and spoke in English to the universe, it was in the voice of Joseph O’Dea.

  As well as our own producers, outsiders came in. Frank O’Connor came to do a trilogy of his short stories which he had adapted for radio. A resident producer sat with him in the glass box to attend to the technical details. Frank took his eyes off the script and listened to the actors’ voices. He noticed that players picked up the pace from each other and tended to sound alike. He got an individual pace from each actor so that their characters were distinguishable to the listener. Because it was his own work the words were never frozen on the page; as new ideas and new ways of saying things struck him, he altered the text, even coming dangerously near broadcasting time. Before Frank came in, the actors had already been cast in their parts by the station. Listening to them speak he saw that some were more suited to other roles. I, who had a walk-on part in The Luceys, found myself playing the lead. Other actors had the same experience in the other two plays, In the Train and The Long Road to Ummera. In this last Pegg Monahan created the part of the old woman living in the city who got her wish to be buried in west Cork.

  Denis Johnston came in to produce his own plays and in particular I remember him doing a work of great imagination and humour, The Old Lady Says No! Mícheál Mac Liammóir was guest artist in the role of Robert Emmet, a part he had created many years before at the Gate. Though he was older now, Mícheál’s voice was still young and my fresh green memory is of the way he used that beautiful voice to create a memorable portrayal of an actor in the part of Emmet, who because of a fall on the stage continues through Dublin in the same role, reliving the days before he met his fate in Thomas Street.

  One day at rehearsal Niall Tóibín, with his back to the studio door, was regaling a group of actors with a delectable impersonation of Mícheál. The door opened noiselessly behind him and there stood the great man himself. Unaware of his presence, Niall carried on, and the actors facing Mícheál were glued to the ground fearing an outburst of vexation. Mac Liammóir’s face clouded momentarily, then cleared, as he realised, I suppose, that imitation was a form of flattery. He gripped Niall’s hand and said, ‘Dear boy, you are a very good actor, but don’t let me ever hear you do that again!’ And with a joyful hum through his nose, which was slightly in the air, Mícheál strode out into the corridor.

  Many people c
ame in. We rubbed shoulders with the famous – Bridges Adams, Hilton Edwards. But the most notable was Tyrone Guthrie, a man of international repute. He came to produce Peer Gynt, which went out live on two Sunday nights. As in Frank O’Connor’s case, the play had already been cast for him, but on hearing the actors’ voices he recast it. Cyril Cusack was to play the title role, but as he wanted some days off to finish a film, Guthrie dropped him in favour of Chris Curran. Guthrie didn’t like the acoustic in the large studio. He wanted a livelier, crisper sound, and the carpets were taken up. Now the sound of the actors’ shod feet was picked up by the microphones so he asked them to remove their footwear. Doing it with our boots off was new to us. Most actors brought in their bedroom slippers the next day.

  Sound effects on disc he dispensed with. The actors had to produce them vocally. For camels trotting in the desert we hit our open hands against our pursed lips making a pop-pop sound, which seemed to tickle him immensely. Howling winds were a kind of banshee sound. With bass, baritone, tenor, soprano and contralto voices, the winds high and low had great variation.

  For a sinking ship there was a large bath of water in which we sloshed about with our hands to give the effect of men struggling in the brine. Drowning sailors filled their mouths with water and gurgled their way to Davy Jones’ locker. Guthrie’s ideas were so new, so inspired and came so rapidly that you’d swear the Holy Ghost had descended on him. But he was a rigid disciplinarian. His voice had the hard edge of that of a British officer and aroused in my memory cells echoes of peasants being made to toe the line. He was a stickler for punctuality. At ten o’clock he stood at the studio door and tardy arrivals had to answer for themselves. One morning a principal actor was some minutes behind the time and was asked what had delayed him. He replied that he had had a nosebleed.

  ‘Show me your hankie!’ Guthrie demanded. The actor did and the rag was red enough to stop the traffic.