Eamon Kelly

by Eamon Kelly

  After a successful run at the Peacock we went on tour. Strong hands shifted the Celtic cross, the holy water font, the slabs of stone and the angel with the broken wing. I was bockety at the knees with fright going on stage the opening night at the Everyman Theatre in Cork city, where Seamus lived and worked, and where he had a legion of friends and admirers.

  I needn’t have worried. The big-hearted Leesiders took a shine to me, and Maureen Fox writing in the Cork Examiner said: ‘Stone Mad is sheer joy.’ She liked my playing of the part: ‘… those who were lucky enough to have known Seamus Murphy time and time again during the evening must have felt as if he himself was speaking.’ She also liked Seán McCarthy’s sensitive direction and Bronwen Casson’s stage design, which set the seal on a wonderful evening.

  FIELD DAY AND THE KING’S HEAD

  I got a chance again to use the sculpting skills I had picked up in Roe O’Neill’s quarry when I was cast with Maura in Tom Murphy’s Brigit, a play for television. Tom, whose praises are sung though I be silent, is one of our foremost writers in the theatre. I was in his A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, directed by Alan Simpson.

  Tom’s play Brigit is a delicate and very moving piece of writing in which a proud though amateur craftsman, the part I played, accepts a commission a little outside his range. It is to carve a statue of St Brigit for the nuns to replace the one which was knocked over by a clumsy postulant and broken into smithereens. The Reverend Mother tries the religious repositories but can’t find a plaster representation of the native saint.

  The craftsman takes on the job and carves the figure in bog oak. He works at it day and night. He pours his soul into the creation. He sometimes sings as the big mallet drives the chisel into the wood and when darkness falls his wife and his grandchildren in turn hold the paraffin lamp to throw light on his work. When it is finished the nuns are dubious about the somewhat crude but honest piece of sculpture. However, after consultation with the parish priest, they accept the statue on condition that it be given a coat of paint.

  The craftsman, incensed at the idea of painting the beautiful dark bog oak, older, he says, than St Brigit herself, takes the figure from its niche and brings it home. He sits by the hearth gazing into the flames, his hand moving over the work he has so lovingly carved. In a fit of rage he is about to throw it in the fire. His wife prevents him and puts the statue in a place of honour in the kitchen. Her name is Brigit too and, tearfully, she says she sees some of herself in her husband’s work.

  The play was imaginatively directed by Noel Ó Briain, and I believe it was the last drama to be screened by RTÉ. That was 1988. The following year it won an award at the Celtic Nations Television Festival.

  During the troubled times in Northern Ireland, I worked with Stephen Rea in the Field Day Company, when he directed Chekhov’s Three Sisters in a translation by Brian Friel. I played the part of Ivan Chebutykin, and when the dizzy hour of my first scene came on opening night in the Guildhall in Derry, a British Army helicopter sat in the sky above the stage and all but drowned me out. I had to strive with might and main to make myself heard. When the infernal machine chugged off at the end of the scene I got a hand, more, I think, in appreciation of my fight against the army of occupation than for any gold-medal acting on my part.

  One day during rehearsals in the Guildhall there was a bomb alert. All out and down three flights of stairs into the open ground. The adjoining houses and shops emptied into the street and people made for the open space around the hall. I saw John Hume in the crowd. In time word came as to the position of the car bomb. All eyes were directed towards an archway maybe a hundred yards away. Suddenly there was an almighty explosion which left a sickening feeling at the butt of the stomach.

  Black smoke billowed from the archway and at its centre there was a red glow tinged with blue and purple. Faces drained of colour and there was a moment of absolute stillness. Some people had to be supported because of the shock. There was a public house at the side of the Guildhall, its windows covered with corrugated iron sheets to save them from flying bomb splinters. We went in there. As the effects of the blast wore off, some had drinks and some had coffee.

  There were two English ladies who worked in the show, a mother and daughter. One was in design and the other a costumier. As a delayed reaction to the explosion the daughter fainted, but the mother was unshaken. She had been through the bombing in London during the Second World War.

  The proprietor was most kind to us and some of the actors used to drop in there when the show was over and stay after hours. One night late, two RUC constables came into the bar. They didn’t take any names but stood at the back in the shadows. When he saw them, Colm Meaney, who played Captain Vassily Solyony in the show, engaged me in a very loud conversation in Irish of dubious ancestry. He was a little in his cups and meant to be provocative. It made for an uneasy atmosphere. After a while the two RUC men left, and at the door one of them turned on his heel and, addressing Meaney, said, ‘Oíche mhaith!’

  While we were in Derry, BBC Television did a documentary on the work of Field Day. When the camera crew came to my lodgings to interview me I was setting out for the launderette. That would be fine, the director said. They would talk to me in the car. The interview was done as we drove along and while I was putting the clothes in the washing machine. Mine was the last piece of filming and immediately afterwards the crew were to drive to Belfast and back to Britain.

  They left, and with my laundry washed and dried I was walking down the street in the Waterside. Putting my hand on the lapel of my jacket I found the miniature microphone which they had forgotten to take. The battery was still in my back pocket, the connecting flex hanging visibly from my trousers belt.

  A twinge of panic as I thought of the explaining I would have to do if stopped by the police. The lilt of my southern brogue wouldn’t help. I spoke into the microphone, calling the crew and telling them what had happened. I wasn’t sure if they could hear me or if they had already left. Noticing a public house nearby I gave them the name of the street and the pub and said I could be found there. Just then a police Land Rover came into view and I held my breath until it had passed me.

  I went into the pub, turned up my coat collar to hide the microphone and tucked the flex under my belt. When I ordered a pint – it must have been my accent – the publican eyed me suspiciously. There was nobody in the room off the bar. I went in there, sipped the pint and every now and then talked in a low voice into the broadcasting unit. After what seemed an eternity the BBC people crowded into where I was sitting, and before the publican could see what was happening they had relieved me of their precious sound equipment. A short without a chaser and they were off. Because of their English accents and their delight at our meeting, the publican showed a new interest in me. We became very friendly and talked about the troubles.

  I nodded agreement when he condemned the outrages of the republicans, but watching his expression out of the corner of my eye, I knew he was somewhat perplexed by my accent.

  During my stay with the Abbey the management was very generous in giving me time off. As well as playing with Field Day and the Irish Theatre Company, I went on trips to America with my storytelling shows and appeared on Irish and British television. The summer of 1977 saw me in the King’s Head in London. The King’s Head is a dinner-type theatre and is carried on in a large room at the rear of the pub of that name. It is run by Dan Crawford, a Canadian who directs many of the plays himself.

  I played there in Da by Hugh Leonard. I was in the name part in one of the best roles written for an actor this century. The play was directed by Robert Gillespie, a demanding taskmaster. His hard work paid off and the play was a dazzling success. We cornered all the critics. Speaking of the character of Da the Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘… Leonard has the theatrical cunning to make brilliant fun of this crazy individualist, who is uncannily impersonalised by Éamon Kelly.’

  As the King’s Head is on the f
ringe of London’s theatre world, the actors are not well paid. They work for the lower salary in the hope that the play may transfer. To help me on this reduced salary Dan Crawford offered to provide lodgings for me. I got a shakedown upstairs in the pub, but the room was too near the kitchen and I couldn’t stand the cooking smells.

  Seeing my discomfort, one of the pub staff gave me his flat a few streets away. It was a one-roomed basement accommodation with no window, just a glass door leading to an open area. I was afraid to open the door at night to let in air in case someone barged in on me from the street.

  On my arrival there the caretaker viewed me with suspicion, thinking, I suppose, that the occupant of the flat was subletting. On my second night, at about two o’clock, there was a loud pounding on the door. I opened it and a man and his wife dashed into the room. The gentleman, who turned out to be the Polish landlord, was in a tearing temper. His wife, a big blonde, her face pushed back as if she had it pressed against a window pane, carried a large handbag from which I expected to get a belt any minute.

  Accoutred as I was in crumpled pyjamas, I calmed them down as best I could. I explained that I was in a play in the King’s Head and that one of the staff, the tenant of this flat, had let me stay for a while. They didn’t believe my story: I was an intruder. I had a poster of the play pinned to the back of the door and I showed them my name, the first under the title and high enough to be well out of reach of a dog’s pee no matter how low it was placed. The name on my passport, which I always take to London, agreed with the poster.

  I gave them a synopsis of my theatrical career, with snippets of my work on Broadway and on tour in the States – I am sure they thought they were making my acquaintance on the way down. They were mollified slightly and withdrew, warning me that subletting was out of the question and to quit when I got other accommodation.

  I told Dan Crawford of my experience and he gave me a flat belonging to a woman friend of his who would be out of London for some time. All I had to do in return was to water the nineteen plants and to care for and feed the cat. For days I didn’t see the cat, but then on putting my hand in the hot press I felt her soft fur. She mewed defensively and then spat at me, but after I had fed her a few times we became firm friends. It was a first-floor flat and in time she got to know the hour at which I would be coming home from the theatre and sat out on the window-sill to mew me a welcome.

  The flat was spacious, two rooms, two beds. It was pleasingly decorated with a large colour drawing of Queen Meadhbh by Jim Fitzpatrick as a centrepiece. I invited Maura and Sinéad over from Dublin. They stayed for a few weeks, and Eoin and Brian, then about eighteen and seventeen, came to London. They explored the city on the Underground, went on a pilgrimage to Wembley Stadium and sat on the Queen’s seat.

  After the run of Da at the King’s Head I put on my one-man storytelling show, In My Father’s Time, at the same theatre. Michael Colgan came over from Dublin to prepare it for the stage, and with the Irish Post and the Cork Weekly Examiner behind me, a good sprinkling of Irish people swelled the audiences each night. I couldn’t have wished for a more intimate space, with a perfect acoustic, in which to do the show.

  Mention of familiar placenames or references to scenes of yore and summers long ago would cause a throat-clearing ‘ahem’ from Irish pockets in the audience. One night a description of an emigration parting at a railway station back home gave rise to a muffled ‘Divine Jesus’ from the front seat. A quick change to comedy softened the catch in the heart, and laughter again ran through the auditorium.

  A one-man entertainment can be a lonely commitment for the actor. He misses the company of the other players, with no one to talk to before the show or during the interval. But the fall of the curtain brought people to the dressing-room, and I met many a son and daughter of neighbours I grew up with in Kerry.

  One night I had company on stage when Dan Crawford’s black tomcat walked on and sat on his bottom a few feet away from me. He took no interest in the folklore I was dispensing but licked his right front paw and proceeded to wash his face. Delighted giggles kept at a low pitch did not disturb him but I knew that his presence was the end of me. I had lost the interest of the audience, but I gradually regained it by addressing the story to the cat in as soothing and seductive a manner as I was capable of. It worked. A two-hander with a cat, and the audience silently loved it. Sometimes, at some telling remark, he stopped the circular washing motion of his face and, with the paw resting over one ear, turned and looked at me.

  The end of the story brought a burst of applause which startled the cat. He looked at the audience, spat once and disappeared into the wings. It was a strange and eerie experience where an animal in all its naturalness took the spotlight off the action and stole the show. While I was on stage thereafter the cat was confined to Dan’s living quarters.

  Many years later I was back in the King’s Head in a production of Philadelphia, Here I Come! directed by Dan Crawford. I was in the part of the father, which I had played in Dublin, Broadway and Shaftesbury Avenue twenty-eight years before. This time we moved from the King’s Head and it was nice to be told by producer Bill Kenwright that my performance was the deciding factor in bringing the play into the West End.

  We were in Wyndham’s Theatre, hard by Leicester Square, while another play of Friel’s, Dancing at Lughnasa, was running in a house down the street. We were doing fine until the IRA caught up with us in the autumn of 1992. Then the bombings began in the centre of London. These tragic events did not affect the theatre attendances at first, but as time went on and the count of the bombings came to fourteen, there were some empty seats in the stalls.

  Just a hundred yards from Wyndham’s Theatre where we were playing, a bomb shattered the Sussex Arms public house. Five people were injured in the blast and one, David Heifer, lay critically ill in hospital. The following day David died. He came from Luton and was thirty years of age.

  What had David to do with the Ireland of the north or south? What had he to do with the invasions or the plantation of Ulster? In what way was he guilty of any crime against the Irish people that he should give his life? He was one of the many in England, including children, who were killed by bombs planted by the young men and women of the IRA. We read in the paper that David carried a donor card and in death he gave to more than one person the gift of life.

  The only gesture we could make was to place a bouquet of flowers with the hundreds of other tributes on the fallen rubble of the Sussex Arms, with the message, ‘In memory of David. From the cast of Philadelphia, Here I Come!’

  WHERE HUBERT HUMPHREY AND PRESIDENT FORD SLEPT

  In the early summer of 1981 I went to America on a storytelling tour organised by Paddy Noonan of New York. I took Brian Collins, the Abbey Theatre designer, with me to set the stage and act as lighting man and tour manager. In New York, while we were preparing to go out on the road, we stayed in an old-fashioned hotel not far from the United Nations building. Because I was commissioned to do a new storytelling show for the Peacock when I came back to Dublin, I got up every morning at six and wrote and rehearsed for two and a half hours. I wouldn’t have done it at home, but I have always found the air in America more bracing, urging one on to activity.

  We used the stage furniture and props which Paddy Noonan had stored in his garage after the Abbey bicentennial tour in 1975. These included a freestanding door and window, and to give ourselves a homely cottage set Brian and I built a fireplace. This could be folded flat to fit in Paddy’s van, and with a full cargo, Brian, I and a driver set out on a tour of places in New England. We visited Boston, Springfield and Worcester.

  There was an Irish contact person in each place, and in Worcester it was Jack Finnegan. We slept in his mother’s house one night. She was away in California. Next day we were taken to Jack’s conference centre, a secluded place deep in the woods. The entrance had no gate, but tied to a post in the middle of a broad opening was a ferocious-looking alsatian on a long ch
ain which enabled him to cover the distance to the piers at each side. Hard by was a helicopter pad in the trees.

  Jack rented the centre to political parties and big business combines. A feature of it was a miniature Roman arena-type room with stepped seats looking down on a blazing fire, where men sat draped in large towels after a stint in the jacuzzi. Here Brian and I sat, similarly accoutred, with Irish American men. It was the time of the Northern Ireland hunger strike and the talk was about Bobby Sands. His ordeal affected them greatly. ‘If he dies,’ one man said, striking his fist in his open palm, ‘oh, if he dies!’

  We saw the conference and various meeting rooms. We visited the bar and had a meal in the restaurant. That night Brian slept where Hubert Humphrey had laid down to rest, and across the corridor I slept in President Ford’s bed. There was a step down to the john in that room and Jack Finnegan told me that the President, who tended to trip himself up, fell into the place to a chorus from his bodyguard – ‘He has done it again!’

  In the closet Jack showed me the red telephone which, when plugged in at Ford’s bedside, was the hotline to Moscow and to the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Finnegan had arranged a radio interview for me at the unearthly hour of 2 a.m., when there would be a hook-up coast to coast. At that time the telephone woke me and, snugly ensconced in the President’s bed, I spoke to the nation.

  When we went to the midwest and the west coast we had to forget about the set and stage furniture. We got a trunk not too large to be taken on a plane and packed into it essential props like the oil lamp, delph for the dresser and objects for the mantelpiece, or whatever versions of them we would get at each centre.