Mark Rylance: Sabotage on Shaftesbury Avenue

 Juno and the Paycock at the Gielgud Theatre

As someone who believes that actors should act and is not too worried about cultural appropriation, I cheerfully headed off to Juno at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in London last Monday not a whit put out by the fact that the three main characters consisted of two Brits and a Yank. I had, however, seen the definitive version of this play with Donal McCann as Captain Boyle, Geraldine Plunkett as Juno and John Kavanagh as Joxer at the Gate in the 1980s – so that set a very high bar against which to measure this production. 

I was distracted, initially, by the accents employed by the main characters as they slipped in and out of bad Irish imitations. However, I soon adjusted and at worst it was a minor flaw. A more obvious problem was the serious miscasting of Paul Hilton as Joxer. There was nothing wrong with his acting, he was just the wrong physical type for the character. Joxer is a Dublin sleeveen, twisted, rancorous, unreliable and a far cry from any suggestion of nobility. John Kavanagh captured these qualities in his whining, insinuating, physically contorted portrayal. Hilton on the other hand (tall, dark and handsome) looked the physical type to play Robin Hood or the hero of a Jane Austen TV adaptation. And that swallow dive through the open window by Hilton was grossly out of character for the barfly Joxer (obviously we blame the director for that). Worse than this miscasting was the outrageous over the top version of Captain Boyle offered to us by Mark Rylance. A actor I admire for his Shakespearean work and for his TV portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall. First of all, what was the Charlie Chaplin look (down to the little moustache) all about? A warning to the audience perhaps of the clowning to come. Captain Boyle was a Dublin layabout not a cheeky chappy and all Rylance’s prat-falling, hamming and physical comedy was incongruous and distracted from the story. It’s Boyle’s use and abuse of language that’s important and not his physical carry on - it was an incongruous and unsuccessful interpretation. The rest of the cast were mighty fine.  J. Smith Cameron (the General Counsel from Succession) was a decent Juno – notwithstanding the occasionally faltering accent. And Anna Healy chewed the scenery as the larger than life Mrs. Madigan. The overall staging and set design was impressive – particularly the tour de force of the tragic third act. However, the scene at the end, where the Captain accidentally shoots Joxer, is not in O’Casey’s script and adds absolutely nothing to the conclusion. I’d have given it four out of five if it weren’t for Rylance’s sabotaging of the main role.

 

CBC Class of 1964 Reunion

 

On walking into the side bar at the Imperial Hotel in Cork to meet up with my old classmates, I first thought that I had come to the wrong place. The group gathered seemed not to contain a recognisable face.This could have been something to do with the bright sunlight dazzling me as it shone through the windows on Pembroke Street behind the group, or it could have been due to a recent bout of macular degeneration. However, a few welcoming hellos soon told me I was in the right place and gradually I began to discern, amidst some indications of a follicular massacre, the old familiar faces. Most of them seemed in fine fettle, personable and talkative – mellowed with age. The class has reduced to 17 at this stage. Death and illness have halved our numbers since our last reunion 10 years ago. None of my bete noires (names on application) from the old days seemed to have made it.

It was a lunch affair so the drinking was more modest than on earlier occasions. Pinot Grigios and Malbecs being as prominent as pints of Murphy’s. Most present were dressed in smart-casual style, with only four, professional gentlemen all, sporting ties. Seven of the 17 wore glasses. There was just a little formality as we sat down to eat. (The food, by the way, was remarkably good. I hadn’t eaten in the Imperial for 10 years but I’ll be back.) The legion of the lost were honoured in a roll call by B. C., and those unable to attend were mentioned. A short speech by P. F.  told of our good fortune in attending such a fine establishment as CBC. It would have been churlish not to mention the source of our happy gathering, even for quibblers like me who did not enjoy his school days or his teachers. 

One long table contained the whole group so it was easy to move around and chat to most of those present - although not alas all. And what a diverse group we are. While I’m uncertain of how all our class ended up, I could identify a barrister, an accountant or two, an engineer, two solicitors, a few bankers, an estate agent, an academic, two journalists, two dentists, and two army officers (ok, I’ve counted K.H. twice). I was surprised to learn that there were at least three, or maybe four, religious vocations in our year. Although some, I believe, didn’t stay the course. A few of the more colourful characters in our class have not survived. There were two drug dealers that I know of (both dead), a once likely lad who apparently ended up as a street sweeper, and a couple of lost souls who were congenitally unfit for contending with the world.

As a group there seemed to be little rancour concerning the regime of corporal punishment that was part of the culture at CBC. I was beaten regularly for not delivering homework (my Latin unseens were a particular problem), but also randomly for imagined infractions on many occasions (hang down your head Dickie Rashers). I remember an English teacher who used to pull me up by my sideburns and another, infamous brute, who used to beat me regularly with an 18-inch wooden stick – until one day I fainted. A fortuitous occurrence that spared me from future assaults. But looking around the group it did occur to me that, with a few exceptions, they represented the more diligent and focused pupils. Consequently they would have escaped much of the carnage. It would be invidious to finger the exceptions, but all seemed to have thrived, notwithstanding their school day crimes and misdemeanours. I was an exceptionally stubborn and indolent boy whose interests lay elsewhere. I’m sure I would have tried the patience of a saint back then – if there were a saint around. Anyway, I’m happy to report that the punitive regime didn’t succeed in beating those qualities out of me.

One notable face missing from the gathering was my old friend Donal Murray (see in foreground below), who died earlier this year. He was my drinking and gambling companion back in our salad days (dancing in the Arcadia and the Majorca, playing poker in the Campfield, nipping across to Donnelly’s Bookmakers for a bet before classes began in the afternoon). We renewed contact over the past six or seven years and would meet in the Corner House, on Coburg Street, prior to Cheltenham to exchange views. Each year he would assert that this would be his last Cheltenham – and eventually he was right. I spoke to him shortly before he died, and the spirit was still intact. He handled his multiple medical problems with courage and equanimity. We had several contentious discussions on an apt final song for his funeral. I was glad he went for the great Warren Zevon in the end:  Keep Me in Your Heart.

Dalkey

October 2024.

 

John Jobson - A Profile

 

An edited version of this profile appeared in the Autumn 2024 edition of the Irish Arts Review.

John Jobson is a hard man to track down. Turn off the N11 for Kilmacnaogue and head up the narrow and winding Bohilla Lane towards the Little Sugarloaf and you will surely get lost (as I did) trying to locate his secluded, tree-encircled property. This is a less challenging task, however, than digging out some background information about the artist on the Internet. Aside from his web site with a date of birth (1941 in Dublin), a record of his exhibitions and pen pictures of his work, you’ll find little online coverage to go on. The Irish Field web site proved a more fruitful source than any art-related sites, albeit focusing on his equine activities. Breeding, breaking and dealing in thoroughbreds has always been of interest to him since his early days in Kildare, and his wife Lady Lavinia Brabazon comes from a family with strong equestrian links.

Jobson has been an artist since his early twenties when he dodged a career in the Irish Guards by deliberately failing the exams for which his father, to ensure success, had sent him to a crammer. A sympathetic teacher at that school had spotted his artistic talent and advised him to follow his star. His earlier education at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (the Alma Mater of Samual Beckett) had encouraged his interest in art by moving him into an A-level class two years ahead of his peers. He recalls “the extremely good art masters” there – especially a Mr. Tovee. It was outside the art room at Portora, aged 14, that Jobson had the epiphany that determined his future. The revelation came to him that “there’s one thing I can control in life and that’s what I put inside a frame – and that’s when I decided to be an artist”.  His subsequent formal art education was sketchy. Having thwarted his father’s military ambitions for him, he went farming at the age of 18, working as a stock man in Kill, Co. Kildare. It was during this period that he “got seriously into horses”. He began breaking horses for the renowned Taafe family and eventually trained a few himself.  While all this working on the land was taking place, he continued to make art and spent a couple of terms at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. He learned little there and suffered some discouraging encounters with the autocratic Sean Keating who had a tendency to insert his own marks into the students’ works in progress: “Keating was the most dreadful drawing master – no feeling for line”.  A move to Surrey followed, where he was again involved with horses. He continued however to paint and to sell. A more productive learning period followed when an in-law, Lady Romayne Pike, who was a sculptor, directed him towards the City and Guilds in London. There he got an excellent grounding in drawing technique: “I knew what I wanted to learn and I learned quickly”. Jobson showed me a portfolio from that time with an impressive collection of life drawings. The very fact that he had carefully maintained his work from that period, demonstrated that for all his rural husbandry and equine activities, the artist within was determined to keep operating. He continued to sell his work piecemeal, frequently to friends in the racing business. He recalls a painting he did of Vincent O’Brien’s Derby Winner Larkspur for its owner, the American millionaire Raymond Guest.  Guest hated the painting because, instead of idealising the animal, Jobson depicted an obvious imperfection in its conformation. The experience stopped him painting horses because he perceived that to survive “horse painters doctored the image”. His first solo show was held in the long defunct Grafton Gallery, run by Ciarán MacGonigal: “he really loved my work – he was taken by the colour”.  Following the closure of the Grafton Gallery, he was taken on by Ib Jorgensen and also showed at the Wellesley Ashe Gallery. However, Jobson was never bound to Ireland, or indeed to any specific gallery for sales. His extensive travels in Europe and the USA led to him establishing relationships with galleries in Liverpool, London (including the prestigious Crane Kalman Gallery), Pittsburg and Maine in the USA, Germany and France.  

Jobson is a tall, amiable man with noticeably large capable-looking hands. Making art takes place alongside his work maintaining his extensive property, much of which he built and landscaped himself. Before he settled in Wicklow, he lived in Sligo where he restored two 18th century cottages near Lough Nasool to their former glory – including a studio for painting.  “I built stables, put down floors, roofed houses, even thatched”.  While we were talking, he was interrupted by a phone call enquiring about whether he had watered the cattle grazing on his land. His experiences as a stock man back in Kildare was still being drawn on. He is far from being a dabbler in the arts however. Walking around his capacious studio, and later around his house, you see evidence of his productivity and creativity everywhere. Aside from the very many paintings, there are also some substantial bronzes (a horse’s head stood out) and a number of woodcut prints. This latter medium, the oldest form of print-making, allows him to demonstrate his skills with knives and chisels. Later, when we went down to nearby Kilruddery House owned by his in-laws (which houses his extensive current exhibition), a giant mural of his covers the walls by the restaurant. In addition to adorning the location with his art, Jobson worked for six years as a stock man on the estate when he first moved into the area from Sligo.

As an artist, he is exceptional in that he has little engagement with the Irish art scene, and it seems few artistic peers with whom he interacts. The only opinion he offered on his fellow Irish artists came when I asked him if he’d known Camille Souter who had lived in Calary, not far away from his home: “I do like her work” he opined. He has shown at the the RHA and the RUA in the past. However, he had two paintings accepted for the RHA Annual Show way back, and bizarrely they weren’t hung. He hasn’t bothered since. He suggests that their dark and uncharacteristically expressive style wasn’t acceptable to the staid academicians of the time. Looking at his colourful and eclectic work it is impossible to place his painting in any kind of Irish tradition. “Colour was always instinctive for me – I was lucky – I didn’t have to learn it”.  There’s a touch of Colin Middleton in his occasional surreal paintings and in his eclecticism, and a hint of John Luke in the idiosyncratically coloured landscapes. But overall, you have to look across to France, to Cezanne and Matisse to find parallels. Matisse is one of the few artists he name checks, and a couple of the works I saw in his studios were painted near Cezanne’s beloved Mont Sainte Victoire.

Unlike many artists, Jobson does not depend on sales. “I never had to paint for a living, I always had other options on the go”. This gave him the liberty to paint when the inspiration to do so called. It was never a daily slog at the easel. Much of his work is painted en plein air and finished on the spot – without further tidying up in the studio. The subject matter depends on his environment. France provides much of his inspiration and his domestic encounters with animals is frequently in evidence. There’s a charming woodcut in the Kilruddery exhibition that shows a man drying the hooves of a horse with straw. This, he explained, is done to prevent a condition called cracked heels, sited at the back of the pasterns. He has mastered the woodcut technique for printing multiples – a rare enough skill these days where etching, lithography and, increasingly giclee prints (i.e. photographs) have taken over.

 

The predominant features of Jobson’s work are its liveliness in terms of colour and the eclectic nature of his style. On the wall of his studio, I was struck by a gorgeous little oil of a night scene in a French village. It’s an almost abstract painting in yellow and green that has the arresting stillness and radiance of true art. Cyclists occurs frequently: Long Ago in Sligo, painted in 1966, glows with light and life and a more recent work, Berlin Biker (see above), inspired by something he saw on a visit to that city, captures a playful, carefree moment. In contrast, On the Somme depicts the ectoplasmic figures of World War 1 soldiers crossing a blood-filled stream. Jobson’s wife Lavinia’s father died there and she also lost six cousins in that pointless carnage. While visiting the area, Jobson had such a vivid sensation of ghostly figures occupying the landscape that he did a sketch on the spot and completed the painting back at his studio - “the figures remained in my mind”. View from Rousssillon, another French-based work, shows the Cezanne influence – though some might feel his use of colour here is more Derain-like. A Tidal Backwater, Wexford with its complex, mottled light, is a work inspired by sketches made on his frequent fishing excursions on the River Slaney. Silkie Bantam painted using tempera shows again his versatility regarding media. The fowl in question spent a number of days contentedly caged in Jobson’s studio while he completed the work.

Visiting Kilruddery House, to view his extensive exhibition running there until September, I am struck by the number of red spots. Restaurants are notoriously difficult places to sell art, so this is a testament both to the accessibility and attractiveness of his work. But Jobson is benignly indifferent to the vagaries of the art market, to the current fads and fashions, and to the spurious hierarchies decreed by the RHA and Aosdana. Since that moment outside the art room at Portora, he has painted what he likes, when he likes, and has never, to quote Schopenhauer, “degraded his Muse to a whore.”

Dalkey

August 2024

Old Acquaintances at Shanganagh Cemetery

 

While I’m spoiled for suitable areas nearby to walk my dogs (Killiney Hill, Killiney Beach, the fields near Shankill etc.), I do like the quieter corners. Shanganagh Cemetery on a weekday morning is such a spot. When the new DART station, being constructed nearby, is up and running this may no longer be the case. The cemetery itself is a newish one and visually undistinguished - although there’s a nice view of the Scalp in the distance. There’s space for the dogs to run around and you can amuse yourself by checking out the gravestones. There are plenty of familiar names. I spot the ever-amiable Bill O’Herlihy of RTE soccer fame - a bit surprised he wasn’t returned to his native Glasheen in Cork but I suppose he made his life in Dublin. I also came upon the grave of poor Raonaid Murray, one of the more egregiously unsolved murders of young women in this country.. The Glenageary girl’s gravestone contained a quote from Schopenhaeur: “I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light of which our sunlight is but the shadow.” An uncharacteristic piece of positivity from the old pessimist. The artist Anne Yeats (W.B.’s daughter) was nearby alongside her brother Michael the FF senator - both with simple minimal grave stones. I pass one with the name Paddy Berkery and wonder was it the red-haired Irish rugby international full-back who played for Landsdowne and always seemed to be enjoying himself on the field - the date of death (2013) was right. I saw him kick a touch-line conversion in Musgrave Park playing for the Rest of Ireland against the Combined Universities - Jack Kyle was also playing that day in what was always an entertaining fixture. Near the newest part of the cemetery I came upon two acquaintances from Cork, both of whom died in the past year: Denis Casey who was in my class in CBC, Cork and with whom I never got on. He was prone to indulge in that classic Cork trait: the sneering put down. The trait that Sean O’Faoleain famously described as “acidulous”. He also pinched a girl from me in 1964 and then gloated about it to my face. I still don’t forgive him. And I confess that I took some pleasure in finding a typo on his gravestone - the capitalisation of a preposition in a headline style sentence. Quelle horreur. He was never very good at English.  Not far away, the other Cork man was a more amiable character and a lover of the good things in life. I’d last met him in Caviston’s in Glasthule a few years ago where he was looking for goose fat. The lean lothario I’d known in Cork had transmogrified into a portly bon vivant. He died of a heart attack on his journey back from a sybaratic holiday on Capri. He set up a very successful business (Behaviour & Attitudes) and I also remembered him dabbling for a while in rock journalism - writing for Hibernia. He was very sniffy, in one piece, about the quality of the Stones playing at Slane in 1982. If you gauge your walk properly, moving up and down the lines of graves, you can get a good hour’s exercise in and there’s a open area at the far end for your dogs to disport themselves in the overgrown grass. I only covered about a third of the graves so I’ll be back for more. 

My Fall and Tentative Rise

 

Caught a bad dose of ‘flu in early March – Flu A, the real deal, not the bad cold we like to term ‘flu. I spent Thursday and Friday in bed feeling sorry for myself – not just on account of the ague but also because of a few events I would miss.  I had particularly wanted to see the Brian Bourke and Michael Kane joint opening at Taylor Galleries and on Friday had booked tickets for Thomas Berhhardt’s The President at the Gate. But not a chance, I was anchored to the bed and even off my food, a sure sign I’m sick.

On Friday evening I got up to use the bathroom, weak and groggy. Having had an erratic piss, I decided to change my pyjama bottoms while standing up. Don’t try this at home children. While removing them I lost my balance and almost in slow motion watched myself crash into the bathroom wall and land on my arse on the floor. I had the fleeting thought that I’ve done some damage here, before I blacked out. I don’t know how long I was under – seconds or minutes, but I came too, freezing cold and with an awareness that I shouldn’t (and couldn’t) move. My phone was luckily just a painful slither away, so I reached it and dialled 999. The ambulance phone operator took my details and asked me to ensure any dogs were locked away – bitter experience I expect. Luckily our German student was at home and she corralled our beasts and opened the door to my rescuers. They had taken about 30 minutes to arrive. They raised me off the floor and asked could I stand unattended – I tried it and I promptly blacked out again. Purely from the pain I suppose but the cautious crew reckoned it was proof that my initial collapse was caused by a cardiac event rather than a simple fall and promptly called in another ambulance for support. The four of them got me on a stretcher and off we roared towards St. Vincent’s. The driver didn’t seem to know about those challenging speed bumps on the Monkstown Road so it was no easy ride – every movement was agony.

A & E was busy but I seemed to skip all queues and got seen by a doctor and X-rayed within 20 minutes. I suspect that the heart attack theory had spread. There was no languishing in the corridor for me either, despite evidence of many others not so lucky. I was brought straight into a cubicle and seen by a number of concerned doctors and nurses and had various tests including a blood test. I was joined a little later by my bemused wife and daughter, just emerged from the Gate where my spare ticket hadn’t gone to waste.

Information about the damage suffered droppeth slow.  First, I was told “no bones broken”. Then it was “a small bone broken, near the pelvis”. Finally, and conclusively, it became “a compressed fracture of the L2 vertebrae.” Not great. And there was lingering doubt about whether my fall or blackout came first – despite my insistence on it being the former. So I’m taken off to a private room in the Acute Medical Unit – the private room, I assume, being due to my lingering and infectious ‘flu. Coming through the A & E system generally means you remain public property.

Then follows three days of pure hell. The slightest move caused a shooting pain in my back and there was no question of sleep. They started me on paracetamol but soon hit the harder stuff – mainly due to my increasingly strident pleas. I assured them that if my dentist in Ballybrack inflicted even 1% of the pain I was feeling he’d give up his profession, yet a modern hospital could not sort me out. Finally I get something very aptly called Nortriptyline which provided the most florid, vivid and realistic hallucinations since my tripping days in London in the late Sixties. While wide awake, I recall reaching out to try and touch objects that were not there. It also induced apocalyptic nightmares from which I was very glad to awaken. I’d say this drug distracted me from the pain rather than relieved it. The addition of codeine via Solpadol eventually provided the best relief, if only moderating the pain.

Although I wasn’t at all hungry, the food I was given was beyond vile, and overtly unhealthy. No fruit, soggy vegetables, veiny meat in problematic gravy, a fillet of cod, stiff with age etc. When I asked for yoghurt I was given one with added caramel. After four days of suffering and starvation I was transferred from my single room into a ward that seemed to be full of dying women. There was one exception, a middle-aged  woman  sitting up and animatedly initiating conversations with anyone who passed. She seemed on a quest to find someone who knew someone that she knew. The rest of the women just lay there stoically, and two were completely immobile, dead or asleep. I saw no future for myself in this ante-room to the morgue so I checked myself out with the aid of a wheel-chair and accompanied by an arsenal of drugs.

Ten weeks later I’m back, gingerly, on my feet – with the occasional employment of crutches. I see a tasteful walking stick becoming a useful prop for a few months and have been investigating the possibilities. The pain has dulled but my consultant has informed me that it won't be going away anytime soon and will probably be a permanent feature.

Happy days.

 

Coda: My orthopaedic surgeon was from Cork and I discovered that his father was the consultant who treated me for a broken arm in Cork University Hospital 40 years ago – following a fall in a hotel bathroom.