Eamon Kelly

by Eamon Kelly

  Timmy believed in a hereafter for animals and he often told me about the man who had a grey horse: ‘A spirited animal with a ferocious amount of white in his eye. A high stepper that left all the traps and sidecars on the road behind him going to Mass. Very well why, the man died and shortly after the horse got sick. People would stay up at night with a sick animal that time. Two neighbouring men were in the stable, one at each side of the horse. With the handle of a broom they were massaging under his barrel to bring him relief from the stomach cramp he was suffering from.

  ‘They were resting from their work when the dead man walked into the stable. One neighbour was stricken with terror; the other fell backwards into the manger with fright. The horse whinnied to his former owner and the ghost put his hand on the horse’s forehead. Then he rubbed down along his mane and down his spine to his tail and the horse crumpled up on the floor. The two white shapes of the dead owner and the dead horse floated out the door and away through the night air. A cow in the stall bellowed and the cock crew on his roost in the fowlhouse.’

  I left Timmy and walked back to the hotel by the lake shore and thought of the time when the waters parted and revealed another world below. A woman storyteller, according to Dinny, was joined in butter with Timmy Callaghan’s grandfather. She was going by the lake with her firkin in the moonlight when she saw the waters part in the middle and lay bare an enchanted land, where the sun shone, the birds sang, the men worked in the fields and there was an abundance of flowers and fruit. She knew if she had a piece of steel to throw into the opening the waters would remain parted, and she could walk down, meet the people, see how they lived, and have another story to tell when she came back.

  She remembered the steel tip on the heel of her shoe and she put down the firkin to untie her lace. Taking her eyes off the lake broke the spell and when she looked again the gap had closed. She was left with only what the mind’s eye can hold, a picture that would always remain vivid and bright.

  It is all of forty years since I first visited Gougane. The men and women who sat in the big kitchen behind the hotel bar and hurried the night are long since gone. They lie in the little churchyard by the lake. May the sod rest lightly on them and on Timmy Callaghan, Dinny Cronin and the Tailor Buckley. Their spirits are somewhere in the skies in a land of fruit and flowers where the air is forever filled with music and the beat of angels’ wings.

  THE STAGE

  Not every actor in the Rep wanted to spend his life behind a microphone, but it was very difficult for us to get permission from the radio authorities to work in the theatre. Stage work could clash with the radio actor’s performance at night when almost everything went out live. However, in the late 1950s tape became available and the Sunday night radio plays were prerecorded. On these free Sunday nights, and without the knowledge of the station I am afraid, I went off with a party of singers and musicians who had appeared in programmes like Take the Floor, The Balladmakers’ Saturday Night, The Rambling House and Fleadh Cheoil an Radio, to distant parts of the country for a one-night stand.

  The pay was small but there was the advantage of working with an audience. Before the era of television personalities, we were the attraction of the hour and we played to packed houses everywhere we went. It gave me a chance of meeting people and many of those I met had stories for me. About seven artists filled the bill: two male and two female singers, a musician, a storyteller and a dancer. A male singer did compère and each performer appeared once in the first half and once again in the second half, but in a different order.

  The shows were lively. There was a great reaction from the crowd and sometimes people talked back to us from the audience, offering comments on the proceedings. In Killarney an old woman in the front row, agreeing with some sentiment in my story, hit the floor with her stick and said, ‘’Tis true for him!’ And in Macroom one of our lady singers wore an off-the-shoulder creation and the other an evening gown showing just as much flesh but with shoulder straps. Coming to the end of the night the compère remarked, ‘We have time only for one more item and what better way to conclude the evening than with a song from one of the ladies. Which one will I send out to you?’ There was a shout from the gods, ‘Send out the one with the galluses!’

  After the show there was always a party and whether it was distant Cahirciveen, Ballina or Castleisland, we travelled back through the night to be in time for work next day. Watching the white road lines under the lights of the speeding car meant that a reflection of those same white lines rolled over my eyeballs as I tried to get an hour’s sleep before going to work in the morning.

  Nearing the end of the decade all the talk in Radio Éireann was about the new television station to be set up. At first it was to be called Cianamharcaíocht – a ‘distant sighting’ – before they hit on Telefís – a ‘ghost seen afar off’! Some people, not as many as expected, were transferred from the station to the new Radio Telefís Éireann. Among them was Meave Conway who took charge of children’s television. She asked me to do a series of ten-minute stories for young people, and on 2 January 1961, after RTÉ’s opening night’s festivities, my face was among the first to be seen in the regular television schedule at 5.30 in the evening.

  I told the stories live, sitting on a chair, with two cameramen who took alternate shots of me. In time one cameraman was dispensed with and later in the series the other one was also given his walking papers, and I was left with the camera fixed in front of me in a studio so small that it was christened the ‘confession box’. The programmes were announced that time, not by a voice-over, but by a physical presence. A lady continuity announcer sat in my chair and told the viewers what they were about to see. Then when the title board came up on the screen – where it originated I don’t know – and while the signature tune was being played, the lady quickly vacated the chair and I sat into it. The red light came on and I was talking to the nation!

  Our two eldest children, Eoin and Brian, were toddlers at the time. I was told that on first seeing my face in the box, they viewed it with an air of incredulity. Then they laughed and began to talk to me, but when I became stern-faced in the course of the story they thought I was ‘telling’ them to be quiet. In a day or two they accepted me as part of the normal order of things. Now I often meet people facing middle age who, as children, watched those programmes.

  I had a story one evening called ‘The Cat and the Splinter’. It was about a carpenter who taught his cat to hold a light for him while he worked at night. The splinter was a long sliver of bog deal used as a light before candles were perfected. I got real splinters from a source in the country and was able to show them on camera. I thought it would be a good idea to light one, and permission to do so was given by the director. It would be an improvement on what was virtually visual radio.

  A little way into the story I lit the splinter ‘and oh my friends and oh my foes it gave a lovely light!’ But when I wanted to put it out, the more I blew on it the more it blazed up. A moment of panic! I thought of throwing it away, but I had visions of an enterprise just opened going up in flames. Suddenly an idea struck me. Maybe I was blowing too hard? I let the light die down a little and then with the slightest puff the flame went out, much to the relief of myself, those in charge and maybe the viewers if they had noticed anything wrong.

  Back in Radio Éireann, restrictions on getting off from the Rep were being eased, and actors were let go to do stage and television work. My first television play was The Weaver’s Grave, adapted by Mícheál Ó hAodha from a short story by Seamus O’Kelly and directed by Christopher FitzSimon. The piece was rehearsed in much the same way as it would have been for the stage, and when it came to the ‘take’ three cameras photographed the continuous action and the director selected the shots he wanted for the screen. We already had audio tape on radio; now visual or video tape became available for television and shows could be prerecorded. Before that, live plays on the box could be an alarming experience, with the next scene being
feverishly set up in a compartment of a revolve, and the waiting actor already up and doing when he was turned into the camera. It was said that an actor who had to do a quick change wasn’t fully into his costume when his partly clothed image burst into the sitting-rooms of the country!

  Our play was recorded in sections as the tape was twenty minutes long. If for some reason we had to stop, the action could not be picked up again and we had to go back to the top. We were in the last minute of a tape in The Weaver’s Grave when a camera on a crane hovering to take an overhead close-up crashed into the end of Malachaí Roohan’s bed. There was a gasp from actors and crew, and Arthur O’Sullivan who was playing the character of Malachaí, and was in the bed at the time, gave vent to an expletive which almost drowned out the sound of the impact. After a cup of coffee the scene was reset and with our hearts in our mouths we started from the top again.

  Hilton Edwards had been head of drama in Telefís Éireann during those early years. One of his first jobs afterwards was to direct Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! for the Gate. Maybe he was conversant with my work, I don’t know, but he sent for me to look at a part in the play. I read it, we talked about it, he gave me the script and said the part was mine. I applied for and got permission from Radio Éireann to absent myself from the station for the rehearsal period only. When the play was running I was to report for work every day. I was often in a live radio programme as late at 7 p.m. and I had to have a taxi ticking over in Henry Street to make a dash for the stage door as near as I could to half-hour.

  We rehearsed Philadelphia, Here I Come! in the bar space in the Gaiety Theatre for three weeks, which was considered adequate time for the preparation of a show in those days. Patrick Bedford and Donal Donnelly played the public and private sides of Gar O’Donnell. Maureen O’Sullivan was the housekeeper. I was S. B. O’Donnell (‘Screwballs’ to Gar Private) owner of the shop, county councillor and father of Gar. Éamon Morrissey played Ned, and Emmet Bergin and Brendan O’Sullivan the other two young men who come to say goodbye to Gar on the night before he goes to America. Dominic Roche was the schoolmaster and Alex McDonald played Canon Mick O’Byrne. Later Mavis Villiers joined the cast as Aunt Lizzie, with whom Gar goes to live in Philadelphia.

  Hilton Edwards was a director of the old school, a gifted man of the theatre. He heard the play in terms of classical music, and he saw it in terms of the pictorial compositions of the great painters. The movements, positions and business of his actors he had in his head as he sat down to rehearsal in the morning. An actor was free to suggest a change in these and if it was an improvement it was kept in.

  ‘May I stand over here, Hilton?’ an actor might say.

  ‘No, dear boy,’ Hilton would answer. ‘You’ll be in that position in Act Two.’

  In interpreting the part of the uncommunicative father of Gar, I fell back on old men I knew in our locality while growing up, one man in particular who rarely spoke when with his own family. At first I was making him too old, senile in fact. Hilton said I was creeping around like a troglodyte, and Brian Friel told Hilton when he came to rehearsal that the man was barely over sixty. I was fifty myself at the time, so a little ageing was sufficient. I got inside the skin of the character and rounded him out till he was redolent of his place on the planet in every respect but one.

  Philadelphia, Here I Come! is set in Ballybeg in county Donegal, but Hilton didn’t want us actors using a Donegal accent. He was totally opposed to what he called ‘regional intonations’, and he settled for a clear peasant quality speech which I believe was much in evidence in the early days of the Abbey. As Hilton observed, ‘If we ever take this property abroad, the punters of New York or Brighton won’t know the difference between a Donegal and a Cork accent. Give them a clear speech. They pay their money and the least they may expect is to understand what’s being said.’ Accents were never my strong point so I was happy enough with that arrangement, as were many others in the cast, to judge by their expressions.

  Under Hilton’s tutelage Patrick Bedford and Donal Donnelly perfected a wonderful double act. They were the same person: one was Gar’s outward manifestation, the other the inner workings of his mind. Gar Private is not supposed to be heard by the other characters in the play as he reveals what the silent Gar Public thinks about them. To the audience this was hilarious when handled by these two talented players. In Act One Bedford sat and felt the lines as Donnelly described my entrance from the shop to sit down to supper with my son on his last night at home. ‘And here comes your pleasure, your little ray of sunshine … ‘ Donal introduces me to the audience in mockingly glowing terms: ‘I give you – the one and only – the inimitable – the irrepressible – county councillor – S. B. O’Donnell!’

  He hums a fanfare while I hang up the shop keys, check my pocket watch with the kitchen clock, tilt my hat a bit … Then in tones reminiscent of the catwalk, he says, ‘And this time Marie Celeste is wearing a cheeky little headdress … The pert little apron is detachable!’ I marry the action of removing my apron to his words. ‘Thank you, Marie Celeste!’ I dust down my trousers. ‘And underneath we have the tapered Italian-line slacks in ocelot … We call this seductive outfit Indiscretion. It can be worn six days a week in or out of bed! Have a seat, Screwballs.’ I sit. ‘Remove the hat.’ This I do and bless myself. ‘On again.’ I put it on. ‘Perfectly trained. The most obedient father I ever had … But hold it. Hold it.’ Here the script says that I take out my handkerchief, remove my upper denture, wrap it in the handkerchief and put it in my pocket.

  I had no false teeth to take out and I was in something of a quandary as to how I could make this piece of business look credible. Hilton unknowingly solved it for me. At the time he had put in a set of top dentures, which appeared to sit uncomfortably on his palate. He champed a little in the manner of a horse with an ill-fitting bit. He always had the denture in place, to enhance his smile, when he spoke to us on the floor, but when he went back to his directorial chair, he turned his head a little, holding a large handkerchief over the lower part of his face with his left hand, took out the offending denture with his right, folded the handkerchief over it quickly and put it in his pocket. An altogether slick operation.

  I practised this manoeuvre, taking out an imaginary denture behind the handkerchief, and it went well at rehearsal. As I have the knack of appearing gummy with my teeth in, when I did it on opening night it brought the house down.

  A delicate thread runs through the bright fabric of the play. It is a memory Gar has of a day spent with his father in a blue boat on a lake when he was a child, a haunting memory of the two of them together. His father sang, and it must have been raining because he put his jacket around Gar’s shoulders and gave him his hat. They were happy. So happy that the thought of it keeps recurring. It comes up when Gar’s mind wanders during the rosary. Was it a dream? To know for sure becomes an ache in Gar’s heart and, through Friel’s beautiful writing, an ache in every heart in the audience.

  Philadelphia, Here I Come! was presented at the Gaiety Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. The King of the Castle by Eugene McCabe ended its run on the Saturday. That night the McCabe set was struck even though it contained a full-size practical threshing machine. Hilton’s Gate Theatre company got in later and on Sunday morning the split-level scene of room and kitchen by Alpho O’Reilly was erected. Hilton lit it during the day and next morning was the technical run-through. That afternoon saw the dress rehearsal and we went on stage that night – Monday 28 September 1964. To do all that nowadays the theatre would be dark for a week.

  Time has washed all memory of the first night from my mind except the curtain call. The first to move down to the footlights were the lesser players. Dividing each way they made room for the supporting characters, and they, dividing again, left space for Donal Donnelly and Patrick Bedford to walk down to thunderous applause. We held the line and bowed until the punters’ hands got sore. Some actors don’t read their notices until th
e end of the run. My curiosity gets the better of me. I read them and they were good, with Donal Donnelly and Patrick Bedford being singled out for their excellent work. All the actors featured in the plaudits, with special mention of Maureen O’Sullivan, Alex McDonald, Éamon Morrissey and myself. Hilton was praised for his superb direction and lighting and Brian Friel for giving us a play that marked a turning point in Irish theatre.

  There were one or two dissenting voices. The critic of the London Times, talking about John Keane (sic), who like Friel wrote about rural Ireland, said that Keane’s characters could translate to Minnesota or Malmö, whereas he felt that Friel’s people lacked this universal quality and that therefore his play might have more significance for local audiences than for people elsewhere. Time has proved this man to be as far out as a lighthouse. Brian Friel’s plays have turned out to be top box office attractions on Broadway and the West End.

  Seamus Kelly of the Irish Times loved the play, but wondered why it all hadn’t been said before and at the Abbey. Frank O’Connor writing in the Sunday Independent quarrelled with Hilton’s direction, saying that the wicked magician (Hilton) turned Friel’s gentle play into a rip-roaring revue, all sexed-up, chromium-plated and with anti-clericalism. Your humble servant, according to O’Connor, was the only one who never lost sight of Mr Friel. ‘… Éamon Kelly as the taciturn father allowed nothing and nobody to impinge on his conception of the play, and by the hokeys in the last few minutes when it was lying dead on the stage didn’t he get up and give it the kiss of life. As for my friend Hilton Edwards I could personally have beaten him to death with my programme.’ O’Connor praised Friel, faulted Hilton and gave me powers of resuscitation which I didn’t have, or didn’t need, but he ended by saying the performances were brilliant and the audience adored the play.