Eamon Kelly

by Eamon Kelly

  Cast and crew were put up in the Irish Club in Eaton Square and a bus brought us to and from the theatre. I rarely sleep after the excitement of a first night, and next morning I was up early and went out for a stroll. The uppermost thought in my head was what kind of reception the press would give the plays. I always fear the worst and for that reason made up my mind not to look at the morning papers. As I walked along, what should I see but the buff shade of the Financial Times stuck in a railing far from a house entrance. I was tempted to have a look but decided against it. When I was returning, the paper was still there. On an impulse I took it and turned to the arts page.

  Anthony Curtis wrote: ‘The Dandy Dolls which we saw last night has a fantastical Celtic cricket-on-the-hearth quality … Folk art can be a bit impenetrable if you are not one of the folk and the strange piece, most spiritedly performed, was received with a baffled air by the audience. In England it would have been a Barrie-ish pantomime … in Germany it would have all centred on the moment when they nailed the doll down to the table, highly symbolic no doubt, but being Irish it all ends with a bit of good old-fashioned priest bashing.’

  Oh well! The Hag of Barna hits Fr James once with the broom, which he takes from her and drives the Hag and her son from the house as our Lord drove the moneylenders from the temple.

  ‘No such bafflement,’ Anthony Curtis said, ‘in The Well of the Saints.’ And he gave a synopsis of the story. ‘As always with Synge,’ he continued, ‘the dice seem to be loaded for pathos, but there is humour well brought out in the main performances of Éamon Kelly and Máire Ní Dhomhnaill, the peatfire in their bellies burnt brightly in the great slagging matches.’ He had praise for the cast, for Hugh Hunt’s direction and for the settings of Alan Barlow.

  The daily and evening papers displayed various degrees of bafflement at The Dandy Dolls, but praised the acting of Éamon Keane, Joan O’Hara, Desmond Cave and Pat Layde.

  Commenting on the production of The Well of the Saints, Michael Billington in the Times complained that ‘some rather cumbersome grouping – with too many solid peasant figures planted downstage – obscures some of the most powerful theatrical moments such as the blind peasant’s first recognition of the faces around him, after his miraculous healing.’

  The press was over from Dublin to cover the event. Gus Smith writing in the Irish Independent said that ‘Missing from the Old Vic on the first night were the Abbey directors. Strange when you consider that this was an auspicious occasion for the company. One also missed the first night reception for the players at the Irish embassy. Surely this is no way to treat members of Ireland’s National Theatre on tour. I regret to have to say that the Abbey Company opened at the Old Vic unheralded and unsung. This will not do!’

  In fact, two directors, Gabriel Fallon and Roibeárd Ó Faracháin, came at midweek. We saw them in the bus taking us back to the Irish Club. They were deep in discussion and spoke ne’er a word to any of us.

  The Irish Club was fairly central, and when free I renewed my acquaintance with the city. I went again to the National Gallery, and fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. I went too to the Tate Gallery and bought a reproduction of Jack B. Yeats’ Travellers – two figures met, and in as lively a conversation as that of any Abbey directors, in a multicoloured landscape in which there were elements of Alan Barlow’s setting for The Well of the Saints.

  I wasn’t finished with that play yet. Years later I played the same part in an Irish Theatre Company’s touring production. It was directed by Christopher FitzSimon, and Maura O’Sullivan was a splendid Mary Doul. The curtain-raiser this time was On Baile’s Strand by W. B. Yeats.

  To go out where we came in, George Fitzmaurice, who is gradually gaining recognition outside the shores of Ireland, is now neglected at the Abbey. In my many years there I was in but one of his plays, The Pie-Dish. I played the part of an honest potter who, wishing to excel at his art, sells his soul to the devil.

  DRESSING-ROOM ONE

  Dressing-rooms at the Abbey were not allotted according to one’s status in a play. There wasn’t any one-actor accommodation for those playing leads as in the commercial theatre. In a permanent company like the Abbey had then, permanent actors, once allotted a dressing-room, remained there permanently. It was like a second home to some, and one actor had many of his personal belongings in his desk drawer, including, it was said, the deeds of his house.

  In No. 1 dressing-room, situated almost under the stage, there were six actors’ places on a long bench in front of six mirrors. The mirrors were lit by twenty-one bulbs, three at the sides of each mirror, and all operated by one switch. In the summertime we nearly melted with the heat. There were lamps on the low ceiling too, but the light bulb inside the door was never put in its socket, because when the door was closed it sheared off the bulb – an indication of how well designed the place was. I dressed in No. 1 over a period of twenty-eight years. The image of the place is etched in my brain.

  In the long bench there were six drawers for the actors’ make-up and scripts; in front of it stood six stools, an easy chair and a rack on which to hang costumes; and under it was a stretcher bed on which to lie when exhaustion set in. In the daytime, many is the man slept off the effects of a few pints on it. There was a toilet, two wash-hand basins and a shower. There was hot water in constant supply and very tempting for non-residents.

  Pale actors in the company dressed together in Nos 4, 5 and 6. The ladies dressed in Nos 2 and 3. In No 1 there were six players, including myself, all of whom came from the regions. Harry Brogan was the only urbanite. Peadar Lamb and Mícheál Ó Briain, when they talked of home, spoke in mellifluous Connemara Irish. At times when those of us fluent enough joined in, our subterranean chamber took on the air of a tiny Gaeltacht.

  But there were two other actors present who never spoke directly to each other. Their mutual animosity was manifest. I often opened the door unexpectedly when they were alone to find their voices raised in bitter acrimony. If the walls and mirrors could speak they would reveal the secret of two men passionately in love with one woman. But when cast in a play as long-lost friends, how convincingly they laughed, shook hands and fondly embraced.

  Only once did I dress in No. 4. That was when Peter O’Toole played in Waiting for Godot, and we were all evicted from No 1 to make room for him. He put a gold star on his door, and his name in Irish – Peadar Ó Tuathail. Other stars who came to our theatre from time to time settled in with the regulars.

  Democracy in the dressing-rooms had to do with the no-star system at the Abbey, which was always regarded as a writers’ theatre. Actors were never mentioned on the posters. The double crown simply said what was on, by whom, what time and how much to get in. All this was stated clearly so that the contents could be gleaned while passing by on a galloping horse. If you stabled your horse and paid your money into the theatre, you could see the actors and read their names in the programme.

  I am convinced that I was the first Abbey actor whose name and physiognomy appeared on a poster. During Tomás MacAnna’s second term as artistic director, he asked me to do an evening of storytelling at the Peacock. I became so nervous at the prospect of standing for two hours in front of an audience that had a job been going as barman in a remote tavern in Katmandu I would have taken it.

  But one-man shows were becoming popular in the theatre in 1975. Mícheál Mac Liammóir had given the headline in Ireland with his The Importance of Being Oscar and I Must Be Talking to My Friends. When I got over the shock of being asked, storytelling seemed to me an ideal subject for a one-man show. I had experience of doing longish storytelling spots in concerts, and my part in The Tailor and Ansty was in many ways a solo effort.

  I got down to throwing some stories together with the theme of emigration, and I called the show In My Father’s Time. Tomás MacAnna gave me Michael Colgan to direct it, and, oh lucky me – we got on like two houses on fire. We found that a number of stories told one after the other could sound episodic. The
re had to be a changing relationship between the pieces, and the links had to be carefully thought out to make seamless the fabric, which we hoped would be colourful and entertaining.

  Meabh Browne designed the set, which had as its focal point the fireplace, where storytellers sat since Fionn and Oisín told tales in the king’s house in ancient Ireland. Opposite the hearth there was a gable wall, a fly-in roof section overhead, and a freestanding door and window. I was given a say in the selection of the furniture. A súgán armchair, two súgán chairs, a well worn deal table, a dresser full of shining delph, a foldaway settle bed, a wickerwork turf basket with sods piled high, harness hanging from a peg, and a box on which sat a white enamel bucket of water from which I drank with a mug to punctuate a piece, or to tide me over a round of applause. There was one holy picture to preside over the proceedings.

  The mantelpiece had an alarm clock, a tea canister, a candle in a sconce, a small oil lamp and letters from America. Socks and an old shirt hung from a line across the fireplace. There were a kettle, a teapot and another pot suspended from the crane, and downstage a butterbox with a hinged lid which became a seat. Inside it was a regular storehouse and the Tailor, who had one, called it his cornucopia.

  Michael Colgan directed me so that I used almost everything on the stage at least once. The armchair was for the long, legendary-type story with the red glow of the fire lighting up my face. Pulling a chair out from the table and standing between them was a gateway. Putting a chair on the table, I sitting at the other end became the driver of an engine pulling a train-load of emigrants out of Killarney station. There were journeys to the turf basket to pile the sods on the fire. There was delph from the dresser, tea from the canister and water from the kettle into the teapot to make the cup that cheers. The table was also a bar or a shop counter to stand behind.

  I moved in the set – sat on the chairs, on the butterbox, leaned against the table, sang a song standing by the dresser while putting a reins in the harness bridle – and I tried to do all this with ease and naturalness, without fuss or ado.

  Before the performance it would be impossible for me to run the lines, there were so many of them. Instead I topped and tailed the stories, fixed their sequence firmly in my head and thoroughly rehearsed the linking pieces. Opening night came. The heart pounded and I reached out for the hand which guides us mortals in times of stress. The people piled in. They sat on the steps and stood at the back. Tadhg Crowley of the box office said afterwards that for the run we did a hundred and ten per cent business.

  The show succeeded beyond all expectations. Because of a misprint in the Irish Times, the admission prices at the Peacock were given as 75p and £1000. Seamus Kelly of that paper told his readers that having seen the show it was worth every penny of it. John MacInerney, writing of the evening’s entertainment in the Irish Press, said, ‘Emigration is the focus of many of the tales allowing the storyteller to dovetail accounts of wakes, partings, returns, all night dancing (and how the clergy put the dead hand on all such joy) and matchmaking. Heartbreak and comedy are held in nice balance, and that salty, sly Kerry humour keeps sentimentality alertly at bay.’

  So great was the demand that every June for seven years I had a new one-man storytelling show on the stage of the Peacock, all but one directed by Michael Colgan. I toured the country with them. I was in so many places that one man said I must have stopped at every back door in Ireland. One night in the great hall of Magee University in Derry the crewman on the curtain told me at the interval that he was going to watch a football match on the box, but that he would be back before the end. He mistimed his return and when I told my last tale I took a bow but the curtain didn’t close. I walked into the wings and pressed a button which brought the tabs across. I pressed another button and the curtain opened. I went out and took another bow. I continued to open and close the curtain and take bow after bow until the audience were rocking with laughter and getting to their feet. I received a standing ovation and gave myself as many curtains as Marcel Marceau.

  I was in New York in January 1976 as part of Ireland’s contribution to America’s bicentennial celebrations. Irish talent was well represented. I stepped into an elevator in a Manhattan hotel and found myself blessed among Siobhán McKenna, Marie Kean, Anna Manahan, Aideen O’Kelly and the singer Mary O’Hara. They were in the Best of Ireland concert in Carnegie hall, as were Peter O’Toole, Donal McCann, Niall Tóibín, Niall Buggy, Donal Donnelly and yours truly, in scenes from Waiting for Godot, Juno and the Paycock, Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World, Philadelphia, Here I Come! and The Loves of Cass McGuire. All backed up by Geraldine O’Grady, Eily O’Grady, Frank Patterson, Caitriona Yeats, Jesse Owens, Hal Roach, the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains and the McNiff dancers. An imposing array – a sight to dazzle the eye.

  The show was presented to an Irish American audience in the presence of Jim Farley, the Irishman of the century, and in the lobby there was a photography exhibition showing the works of Fergus Bourke.

  Of course the whole caboodle was meant to be held in Madison Square Garden, but the New York promotion committee, once formed, split (in the fashion of many Irish movements), and the energy which should have gone into publicity and organisation went into bickering. The Madison Square Garden plan fell through, and we ended up playing to a fairly packed Carnegie hall, but only for a matinée performance.

  Robert C. Roman of the Irish Echo declared the show ‘an unqualified success … a magnificent production’. He said that everyone associated with the afternoon of the best in the cultural and entertainment arts deserved rich praise. News of it spread across the Atlantic and Alfred Paul Berger said in the Irish Times: ‘The entertainment itself was pervaded with a kind of gentle, endearing innocence too seldom encountered in this hard-bitten age and area. The entire affair was one large Irish Valentine, unabashedly unsophisticated, and the more winning for that. While Siobhán McKenna and Peter O’Toole were most in evidence, the performance was well laced with many more or less recognisable names in all divisions of the arts.’

  THE CLOTHES

  I found that the sense of continuity at the Abbey was a cherished commodity. It hung by a thread of stories told by old actors, parables that went back to the founders of the theatre and to those who practised in it down the years. Many of the tales you could take with a pinch of salt, like the one about a wardrobe seamstress in the old days who was so pious that she wouldn’t sew buttons into men’s trousers’ flies.

  The wardrobe was part of the Abbey tradition. When I became a member there was a great stock of costumes used in the theatre’s repertoire of native plays. Each director selected garments from this collection for his new production. The store contained costumes designed by the artist Seán Keating for a production of The Playboy of the Western World in the 1940s. There were items which must have come from Connemara or the Aran Islands, for their handiwork had all the crude honesty of a country tailor.

  From his hand came grey and brown bréidín (tweed) coats, collared waistcoats, báiníns, trousers and knee breeches for the men. There were red flannel skirts for the women. An assortment of aprons and brown-and-fawn paisley shawls with tassels. These last could have walked off the oil painting by Grace Henry of three shawled Connemara women bunched together on a hill. Among all these items there was a gent’s tweed coat, faded and foxy and built in the cutaway fashion of the last century. It came to just above the knees and had large pocket flaps. It was much the worse for wear, with frayed edges and the padding protruding from a tear in the left shoulder. I wore it many times and got so fond of it that I became jealous if I saw it on another actor’s back.

  It fitted as if it was made for me, and with a neckcloth, knee breeches and long grey homemade stockings, the outfit on me looked the real goat’s toe in any turn of the century native play; even more so if topped with a battered, greenish, floppy felt hat and supported by a pair of boots so old and pliable they could have first been worn by Barry Fitzgerald. I
t was my costume in the character of Old Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World and Scots people got an eyeful of it when we took the play to the Edinburgh Festival. The Irish collection, as I’ll name those old costumes, was part of the Abbey’s continuity.

  It was in Hugh Hunt’s time as artistic director that a lady from Manchester took over as wardrobe mistress for a while. She must have been flabbergasted at the collection of Aran Islands and Connemara drapery, the likes of which she’d have never seen in the illustrations in her theatre costume textbooks. Anyway she got rid of the whole motley caboodle. What happened to my tweed coat I do not know.

  I would have liked if ‘the clothes’, as Harry Brogan always called the costumes, went to the St Vincent de Paul. And it could be so, for one day I am almost certain I saw my foxy coat on the back of a poor man fingering the keys of a decrepit concertina in Talbot Street. A dark green hat with a scattering of coppers inside lay by his ancient boots. If the coat was mine it was still in show business.

  It may be only a fancy, but my feeling is that the old Abbey went out the door with those costumes. The permanent company to all intents and purposes is gone and there are new faces before the footlights.

  WHITE-KNUCKLE FLIGHTS

  In mid-February of 1976 I was haring across the Atlantic again, on my way to Newfoundland to contribute to the Canadian Association for Irish Studies seminar in the University of St John’s. Author Bryan MacMahon, playwright M. J. Molloy, the folklorist Kevin Danaher and many more were on the team from Ireland.

  Bryan spoke about Peig Sayers and the vernacular of the storyteller, M. J. Molloy on the making of folk plays and Kevin Danaher on the customs and lore of the countryside. There were readings by the poet Thomas Kinsella, and Eileen O’Casey talked about her husband, Seán.