Recent Reads: December 2024

Walled in by Hate - Kevin O’Higgins, His Friends and Enemies

By Arthur Mathews

*****

This is an absorbing and revealing take on O’Higgins and the Civil War period. It’s very readable for a history book and offers much attendant colour and detail to this tragic episode. It’s clear Mathews’ sympathies (and mine) lie with the Free State. The anti-Treaty forces strategy was to undermine the new state by hitting at its infrastructure and thereby forcing the Brits back to the table so they could renegotiate the Six Counties deal. This was never going to work, which soon became clear, so that in the end it was pure destructive nihilism driven by diehards (to use O’Casey’s term) such as Liam Lynch. De Valera is nowhere to be seen and his sole purpose seems to have been to give the anti-Treaty side the imprimatur of his support. The draconian response of the new government and O’Higgins was justified by the support of the vast majority of the population who wanted to see the new state survive. It’s a great irony of history that those who strove to strangle the Republic at birth went on to govern it for the bulk of the last 100 years – and, sadly, continue to do so. A feature of the book is the number of anecdotes that emphasise the absolute religious faith of the protagonists on both sides. Young men in prison facing execution the next day all seemed at peace with their impending extinction following the ministrations of their priests. They all assumed they were going to heaven I suppose, following confession. A bit like those Islamic martyrs these days. O’Higgins relationship with Hazel Lavery (platonic or not) was a bizarre episode – his dedication to faith and family seemed at odds with this strange dalliance. You don’t expect one of the writers of Father Ted to turn up on the history shelves, but Mathews has produced an entertaining and very informative book, throwing new light (for me anyway) on O’Higgins and the Civil War. And casting a cold eye on that brute Liam Lynch.

 

John Montague 

A Poet’s Life

By Adrian Frazier

*****

Adrian Frazier was a friend of John Montague and it’s a testament to his objectivity that after reading this biography your admiration for Montague the poet has increased, but your liking for the man has been diminished. His childhood traumas are well explored and underpin much of his poetry. The other major influence was his obsession with women and his absorption of Robert Graves’ fairly daft notion of the female as muse in The White Goddess. A stance that alienated him from many in the burgeoning Feminist movement. His stammer was a life-long affliction, and he went through life feeling that he never really received the respect and kudos he merited. He was particularly piqued by the attention enjoyed by his fellow Ulsterman Seamus Heaney. The climax of this sense of being thwarted of his dues came when on the day his Collected Poems was published, it was announced that Heaney had won the Nobel prize. The windows of Hodges Figgis and Waterstones were full of his books on publication day, and the next day they were gone, replaced by Heaney’s entire oeuvre. His marital misadventures are well documented, especially his fraught relationship with his second wife Evelyn, a fiery French woman – violence on both sides apparently. For anyone interested in the Irish literary scene this is a page turner with a rich cast of characters and it does full justice to Montague’s rich poetic legacy. Rows with an easily-affronted Derek Mahon and a cantankerous Aidan Higgins feature but there are also encounters with a host of the familiar names: Samuel Beckett, Barrie Cooke, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg amongst them. Frazier’s entertaining book will surely prove to be the definitive biography.

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. 

 

 

Mick O’Dea and the DruidO’Casey Trilogy

A shorter, edited version of this article appears in the current edition (Spring 2024) of the Irish Arts Review.

 

It seemed particularly apt when Interviewing Mick O’Dea for this article that our meeting took place in his Dublin studio on Henrietta Street. This wide, cobbled street, leading up to the Kings Inns’ archway, is the first of the great Georgian building projects to adorn our capitol. It went from being home to aristocrats in the 18th Century to infested tenements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with up to 100 people sharing one house. This was the environment in which Sean O’Casey grew up (in nearby Mountjoy Square) and buildings such as this formed the backdrop to his great trilogy: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, and The Plough and the Stars. Walking up the original stairs with its time-polished banisters, O’Dea pointed out a series of metal clamps at intervals along the rail, designed apparently to thwart those wayward lads of yore who might attempt the deliciously lengthy slide. An early painting from his current Druid series shows The Young Covey from The Plough and the Stars (played by Marty Rea) looking back up these very stairs. A creative and leap by O’Dea as he’s brought the actor from the Druid stage to his own studio. O’Dea was equivocal about including this resonant work in the upcoming show as the scale of the figure is unrepresentative of what he’s aiming for and it doesn’t portray the back stage action that’s his main concern. On the way up to his second flor studio we pass the locked-up studio of the late and much lamented Mick Cullen, and next door was Charlie Cullen’s studio. Fergus Martin’s space was further up on the top floor. All these artists benefited from the ongoing generosity of the MacEoin family who let the spaces at peppercorn rents. Given the sturdy and impeccable Republican roots of that family they would surely approve of O’Dea’s current engagement with O’Casey’s plays. We sat in O’Dea’s chilly studio crammed with paintings, drawings, and a profusion of books and catalogues. In the corner was a typical minimalist Charlie Brady painting of an envelope. O’Dea remembers how helpful Brady was to him as a young aspiring artist - opening doors for him on a visit to New York.

 

We were meeting to discuss his exhibition What is the Stars? at the Molesworth Gallery, inspired by Garry Hynes’s epic production DruidO’Casey. The title of  O’Dea’s show is Captain Boyle’s metaphysical plaint from Juno and the Paycock (echoed by his drinking buddy Joxer). DruidO’Casey involved the consecutive staging of the three great O’Casey plays on the same day. It premiered at the 2023 Galway International Arts Festival and also enjoyed runs in Dublin, London and New York – where it was described by the New Yorker as “the season’s most exciting international visit.” The genesis of O’Dea’s exhibition was a phone call from Hynes asking him if he would like to be artist-in-residence for DruidO’Casey and document visually the preparation and staging of O’Casey’s masterpieces. O’Dea’s painting Attention had been used in the promotional material for the show and Hynes had been impressed by his recent exhibitions commemorating 1916, the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War. In particular she was taken by his capturing of the period detail, the colour of the uniforms and the self-consciously stagey way many of the protagonists posed for the photographs on which the exhibitions were based. O’Dea saw them as the rock stars and boy bands of that era - with Lee Enfield rifles replacing Fender Stratocasters. Hynes had bought one of these paintings for her own collection (a depiction of one of the infamous Black-and-Tans curiously). “It acts as a sentinel as you walk in the door of her house” he reports. Hynes felt that O’Dea was the right man to do justice to her drama set in the same period.

 

Over a period of 3 or 4 months in the summer of 2023, O’Dea embedded himself within the Druid company as they went about their elaborate preparations for the mighty enterprise. Most of the activity took place in rooms at the Digital Hub in Thomas Street, Dublin. In addition to sitting in on rehearsals and ultimately viewing live performances in Galway, O’Dea observed the multifarious creative and backstage activities that staging a play entails. While viewing the dress rehearsals in Galway, O’Dea was delighted to be joined by his old friend Brian Bourke in sketching the action on stage. Bourke had a tradition of making drawings of Druid productions and asked O’Dea if he could sit in for a few days. “You the maestro” was the generous response. “It was nice to catch up with Brian” O’Dea remarked and he commented on how fit and flamboyant (scarves, hats and fancy shoes) the older artist remains.

 

O’Dea spent time with the set designers, the musical director, the dance coordinators, the sound engineers and the wardrobe people. While not directly responsible for the latter activity, he was able to offer Francis O’Connor and her team advice and suggestions concerning the dress and uniforms of the period. “It was superficial help” he concedes modestly.  “I was  familiar with military uniforms. I could be useful with the particular shade of bottle green used by the RIC for example”.  O’Dea has had a lifelong weakness for men in uniform and refers more than once to a box of lead toy soldiers from his childhood stored on a high shelf in the studio. (Coming from a military background myself, I was tempted to ask him to get them down to play but my fatal sense of propriety kicked in.) Like these toy soldiers his aim in the exhibition was to reduce in scale the actors in the O’Casey plays to reflect the relative puniness of their presence on the giant stage in which they operated: to emphasise the staginess and artifice rather than go for a realist depiction of the action.  “I need to have the figures diminished by the scale of the arena – elements in a bigger composite.”

 

There is a history of artists engaging with the theatre: Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec spring immediately to mind and Walter Sickert in London. In Ireland Jack B. Yeats didn’t just depict the theatre in his paintings but also wrote plays and was involved in stage design. Louis le Brocquy also got involved in stage design, I remember that significant tree on the Gate stage for Waiting for Godot in 2003. However, these artists were mostly involved in set design or in depicting the audience or the actors on stage. O’Dea’s is a different take. He sees Edward Hopper as the nearest parallel with his cinema usherettes – a focus on the attendant elements. I like the parallel with another epic enterprise with which an Irish artist engaged – Sean Keating’s series of  paintings of the development stages of the giant hydro-electric scheme at Ardnacrusha. When I mentioned this fanciful connection, O’Dea gleefully pointed out that Keating hadn’t been paid for his enterprise, whereas his own efforts were sponsored by An Post.

 

As well as serving as a record of a great artistic enterprise the paintings must succeed in their own right by having the impact and radiance of art. Ou find this in the expectancy and energy in Up Above for example which shows a character at the floor of a staircase not unlike the one in Henrietta Street. I thought it could be Joxer looking up to see if Captain Boyle is emerging to join him in a visit to the pub, or maybe Fluther seeking help to loot a bombed pub. It’s actually Marty Rea as The Young Covey, presumable engaged in more serious business. You see it also in the piquant juxtaposing of the O’Casey character in the wings and the stagehand on stage in Stagehand and Irregular.

 

A number of the paintings were built around dress rehearsals, with characters in costume waiting to go on – the period costumes often clashing anachronistically with modern Exit signs or backstage paraphernalia. In Mollser we see Tara Cush as O’Casey’s tragic consumptive from The Plough and the Stars during dress rehearsals – she sits amidst ladders and technicians back stage as she awaits her cue. She looks nervous but perhaps her stricken look is her getting into character as the misfortunate girl. In Captain Boyle we see  Rory Nolan as the feckless husband in Juno and the Paycock getting in the mood for his entrance in full 20s period costume while standing beside a palpably modern door. The artifice exposed. In similar vein Rosie and the Barman depicts a scene from a  dress rehearsal of The Plough and the Stars - rear views of Anna Healy and Sean Kearns below an array of lights. In the Wings exposes the anachronism of a modern blue plastic bag. Back Stage reveals the relative chaos and disorder behind he scenes as the carefully ordered and choreographed action takes place out front. The ominous cowled figure in the doorway seems a portent of doom – apt for the times that O’Casey was writing about in his trilogy.

 

DruidO’Casey was arguably the most significant cultural event in this country in 2023. O’Dea’s dense, and evocative exhibition provides a permanent record of its genesis - of the physical toil and creative energy that went into the great project. The playwright Denis Johnston famously said of the 1916 rising that “the birth of a nation is never an immaculate conception”. What is the Stars is  O’Dea’s visual equivalent of that comment in relation to Hynes’ revolutionary production.

 

John P. O’Sullivan

March 2024

 

 

 

 

“The End” - the Doors’ Gothic Dream Song Brings Back a Hot Day in 1967

 

Driving near Schull yesterday one of those evocative tracks from the past comes up on Spotify – The End by the Doors.  It was from their first and best album, The Doors, released in January 1967. I am immediately taken back to a baking afternoon in August of that year. I am heading to Clanricarde Gardens in Notting Hill with a friend to score some dope from a group of Irish friends we bumped into regularly around Earl’s Court - and with whom we shared an affection for the Warwick Arms on Warwick Road - where acceptable pints of Guinness were available. We arrive at their spacious ground floor flat and are let in after the customary paranoid interrogation (“who are you with”, “anyone around”). The room is in semi-darkness, the heavy, floor-length velvet curtains closed and a small lamp is fighting the murk. There is a heavy smell of hash. Pakistani Black was the most generally available form of marijuana in those days. It was a heavy, drowsy, high - conducive to listening to Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues and to crashing out. The End was playing as we entered the room. It was my first time hearing its Gothic doom-laden lyrics and dramatic musical pyrotechnics. The three occupants were Batt, Deke and Martin – all stretched out on comfortable armchairs and clearly stoned. Batt was the officer in command of their little drug-dealing triad. He was the son of a Garda sergeant in Clare and his drug-dealing would escalate to dealing heroin internationally and dying a few years later from an overdose in a hotel room in Toronto. He was a speedy, dashing guy who usually sported a beret and was always plotting the next move, the next rip off. His two companions Deke and Martin were very different types. Deke was a good-time Charlie with an endless capacity for booze and dope and little going for him except a striking physiognomy and a large muscular physique. He returned to Cork in later years and became reclusive due to a large growth on his once handsome face. He too is long gone – but his was a lingering, dying fall, played out in the corners of murky suburban pubs far from his old haunts. Martin was a slim, good-looking man with very long dark hair and sensitive features. He was a gentle soul, intelligent and well-read but much riven by a destructive cynicism about life in general and any form of endeavour or aspiration. He became a heroin addict and died choking on his own vomit about 10 years later. We were motioned to one of the abundant sofas in the room, a fresh joint was rolled and we too settled back and listened to that portentous Doors album on repeat. “This is the end, beautiful friends, the end.”