Cheltenham 2025 – the Story So Far

This has been one of the most eventful Cheltenhams so far – with hot favourites (Marjborogh, Constitution Hill, Jonbon etc) failing and romantic stories abounding. My betting returns have been solid but unspectacular – two winners and lots of places. Prior to the Festival, I had been going through a prolonged period of seconditis (almost getting it right) – so much so that I began to halve my win bets and back everything each way. This seems to have worked well the first two days. The opening day is my favourite, and the opening race, the Supreme Novices Hurdle, my favourite race. Sure enough the very hot Mullins favourite won, but I had the second, William Munny, at 8-1. He was also in my each way Yankee. I just watched the next two races which were chases, I mostly focus on the hurdle races. In the Mares Hurdle I had another second – Jade De Grugy at 5-1. The next race was the Champion Hurdle and I had a very strong fancy for State Man (owned by my old classmate Joe Donnelly) – especially at the generous 10-1. He won it last year and there was widespread uncertainty about the short-priced favourite Constitution Hill. I had a decent single bet as well as having included it in my burgeoning Yankee. When Constitution Hill fell my bet suddenly became more promising and with the second favourite Brighterdayahead weakening from two out I was already calculating my winnings, and feeling that warm glow about being correct in my judgement. He was well clear at the last hurdle, but instead of just popping it, Townend inexplicably went for a long jump, clipped the top and went arse over tip. From woe to weal and after out of joy eh. Just to add salt and vinegar to the wound, the fourth horse in my Yankee, Haiti Coleurs, trained by the fragrant Rebecca Curtis, won the last race at 7-2. So while I didn’t lose on the day, I didn’t win as substantially as I coulda, shoulda.

 But you wipe the slate and get down to studying day 2. I did the usual Yankee and my anchor bet was Impose Toi at 13-2 in the Coral Cup – on whom I had a hefty each way bet. Jumping the last he looked the winner, but was caught on the run-in by a Mullins dark horse. Second again but quids in and Yankee intact. I know I shouldn’t bet in the Cross-Country but, as am I sentimentally attached to Henderson’s Mister Coffey, I had  included him in my each way Yankee. He gave me a good run for my money and plodded home in 5th -  which kept my Yankee intact as Paddy Power paid for 5 places. Next came the Two Mile Champion Chase and I had a decent bet on Marine Nationale – considering him a certainty to be at least placed. The hot favourite Jonbon jumped poorly after a slow start and my choice ran sweetly from start to finish and provided a poignant reminder of what might have been.  His erstwhile jockey was Michael O’Sullivan, tragically killed a few weeks earlier. Quids in and each way Yankee intact. The fourth and last leg of my Yankee was the most problematical – Jason Des Dames at 22-1. He is trained by Henry De Bromhead who has not been going well so far. However he has a tiny weight and surely Henry’s luck must change on a course where he has been so successful. He jumped well all the way around but when the going got tough between the last two fences he began to fade. However, there was a lot of fading going on and he managed to drag his weary arse into 5th place – just making the each way mark. Suddenly my each way Yankee made for a very decent day. 

King Lear at the Gate

 

It was refreshing to see a relatively conventional production of King Lear at the Gate, not the novel contemporary take, often trying too hard. Director Roxana Gilbert also avoided the United Nations casts that have become the norm (leading to speculation such as why Ophelia is from a different race to Laertes etc.). Ok, Kent was played by a woman, as was another male character (Oswald), but gender fluidity was common in Shakespeare’s time, so we’ll allow that. The costumes too were not trendily modern but rather an essay in what ancient Britons may have worn. The set design was abstract and striking, falling somewhere between Richard Gorman and Patrick Scott – but with strong rich reds and blacks predominating. Conleth Hill as Lear was mighty fine, as was Stuart Graham as Gloucester – mind you their similar white-beardedness could cause confusion for the ill attentive. The juicy parts of Goneril (Jolly Abraham) and Regan (Evan Gaffney) were also played with relish, and as usual goody-two-shoes Cordelia was left with the blander lines. If there was a weakness in a fine entertaining version, it was in the character of Edmond. The actor just seemed to lack the presence and substance of this prime mover of evil intent. Not bad in the part – just not quite right. The gouging out of Gloucester’s eyes (more pulling than gouging in this case), led to some incidental entertainment. When Edmond did the dreadful deed, he threw the removed eyes one by one on to the stage floor where they made a convincing plop. At the second plop, two middle-aged women sitting a few rows in front of me, of the dress-up-for-the-theatre type,  rose from their seats and marched out righteously – their body language suggesting that they were much affronted. They clearly hadn’t done their prep – it’s one of the best-known scenes in the play. King Lear is, as we know, a tragedy, but I wonder if some of the language has become risible in a modern context. A few times the audience burst into laughter at what seemed to me to be inappropriate times. (I did feel a repressed urge to chortle occasionally myself) One particular instance was when Edmond lay dying as he uttered the deathless words:

“Yet Edmund was belov’d.

The one the other poisoned for my sake,

And after slew herself.”

Cue an outburst of guffaws from the audience. Maybe it was the way the actor delivered the lines, bathos is pathos gone wrong.

Overall a fine night out at the theatre – all three hours of it (less intermission).

 

The Racket by Conor Niland

Sports books are inclined to be dreary and predictable with a few bits of carefully calculated spice added to titillate potential readers and make a reviewer’s task easier. There are of course exceptions, Andre Agassi’s colourful autobiography comes to mind, where we learn how he came to loath the game that made him rich and famous. And of course there’s Thomas Hauser’s magnificent biography of Muhammad Ali. The closest Irish books to Niland’s in tone are Paul Kimmage’s cycling memoir Rough Ride and Eamon Dunphy’s Only a Game about his time at Millwall. The three books demonstrate their protagonist’s ultimate disillusionment with his sport after scrabbling around for years on its lower slopes. Niland’s book is better written, more intimate in its details of the struggle for success, and almost tragic in its trajectory. His ultimate and most damaging failure shows Niland choking when on the brink of winning a match that will propel him on to the centre court at Wimbledon against Roger Federer - player he had beaten as a junior. Tennis is uniquely a game that is not over until the last point is won and anyone who’s ever played the game will remember matches where they threw away considerable leads by tightening up as the finish line beckons. I still recall a backhand volley I hit into the top of the net at 30-0 and 7-6 in the final set of an important match in 1962. Niland has the same recall of crucial points in his career. You don’t have to be a tennis fan to enjoy his life story – there’s loads of attendant colour and detail of life on the road as a struggling sportsman. La dolce vita it was not. A running theme, by the way, is the lack of support by the Irish tennis establishment for aspiring pros and juniors of potential. This starts I suppose at government level. Niland was mostly dependent on his middle-class parents for survival. A riveting read.

 

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.