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“Stones in His Pockets” Coming to Ambler’s Act II Playhouse

Tony Braithwaite and Chris Faith, during rehearsals at Act II.

Marie Jones’ award-winning comedy, “Stones in His Pockets,” is classified as a two-hander. In theatre jargon, that means there are two main characters.

Maybe they call it that because to call it a 30-hander would seem physically impossible. And yet, here you have two veteran local actors, Chris Faith and Tony Braithwaite, intrepidly embodying 15 characters, with all of the action compressed into one tight, fast-moving little show.

(Editor’s note: There’s been a recent change in the cast. See below.)

“Stones in His Pockets” is about what happens when a Hollywood movie company descends upon a tiny town in County Kerry. The show, directed by William Roudebush, starts September 2 (press opening on the 5th) and runs through September 27 at the cozy Act II Playhouse in Ambler.

(And for those of you who just can’t wait to see this multiple award-winning comedy, stay tuned for news about a sneak preview that is also a benefit for the Hibernian Hunger Project.)

Braithwaite and Faith have worked together before, including their 2005 performance of “Good Evening,” by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. That’s right—a two-hander. And, technically, yes, they’re two characters in “Stones”— Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who hired on as extras for the film, a hyper-romantic view of the Emerald Isle. But the play also requires that they fill a whole lot of other shoes.

“Good Evening” posed a challenge, Braithwaite recalls. There were two characters on stage from beginning to end, and they assumed other characters. But, says Faith, “in this play there can be three or four characters on stage at the same time … or more, even.”

So as bad as it is to step on another actor’s lines in a play, Braithwaite and Faith have the potential to step on their own. Or worse, adds Braithwaite: “Showing up as the wrong character for a split second, and then realizing that you have to turn the hat around a little bit, or whatever that character’s little flair is.”

In rehearsals, Faith is wrestling wth similar issues: “I can hear when a voice from another character creeps into the voice I’m doing, and I pull back. For now, it’s fine-tuning all that stuff.”

Juggling the multiple personalities also poses a challenge for the director.

“Oftentimes when characters play multiple roles they go off and they come back on as another character, which makes immense sense,” says William Roudebush. “But sometimes the changes are instantaneous, right in front of your eyes. Part of what I’m trying to do as a director is to make that change very magical, to take advantage of the moment.”

Another challenge: Playing Irish, which Braithwaite has done before. He played the character Paddy O’Gratin in “The Big Bang,” described as a “madcap tour of history.”

“He sang to his potato, the last potato in Ireland,” he recalls. “It was a love song. That was the last and the only time I ever had to do Irish.”

For Faith, putting on an accent—something that sounds something other than “stage Irish”—is a new experience. “It’s challenging,” he says, “but I think there are three major sounds we’ve got to hit all the time. I think that, if we’re in the ballpark, we’ll be OK.”

Though “Stones” is a comedy, Roudebush says it’s his goal to treat all 15 of those characters, especially the Irish, with respect. “The soul of the play is Irish,” he says. “It’s a great honor and challenge to have to try and live up to that—and not make it a cliché, that’s for sure.”

All three describe themselves as journeymen—or, as Roudebush quips, “I like to say that my job is finding work.”

Roudebush has been “finding work” for over 30 years. His 2002 revival of “Equus” was nominated for eight Barrymore awards and won five, including Best Overall Production of a play, Best Ensemble and Best Director. He has taught at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, The University of Memphis, The University of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, along with being Theatre School Director for the Walnut Street Theatre for four years. He is currently director of musical theatre for the Performing Arts Institute in Kingston, Pa.

Both the actors are well-known in Philadelphia theatre. Like most actors, they do—or have done—other things. But what they do all the time—because to do otherwise would be unthinkable—is act, and when they’re not doing that, looking for opportunities to act some more.

Braithwaite, a Barrymore award winner (for the role of Boyd in “The Big Bang”) used to teach theology, theatre—and sex education to freshmen—at St. Joe’s Prep: “I used to say—I teach theatre, theology and sex ed, so we do ‘Agnes of God’ every year.” (Cue the rim shot.) He still directs shows at St. Joe’s.

Faith has appeared Off-Broadway in “The Secret Garden” and “Like It Is” at the York Theatre. He is a three-time Barrymore Award nominee. He and his wife have a children’s performing arts studio in Plumsteadville.

Now, as to that sneak preview:

The final dress rehearsal of “Stones in His Pockets” will be open to the public on Sunday, August 31, at 2 p.m. The suggested donation is $10, and all contributions will be donated to the Hibernian Hunger Project, a community service program that feeds needy people in the Philadelphia/Camden area. (Hey, how can you call yourself a Hibernian and not go?)

Three preview performances will be held September 2-4, with tickets discounted at $20. Talkbacks will be held after the first two 8 p.m. previews, as well as on Thursday, September 11, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 21, at 2 p.m.

Opening night is September 5, followed by a reception. All evening performances are at 8 p.m., and matinees begin at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Tickets are $25 for all Wednesday-Thursday performances and $30 for Friday through Sunday shows, with discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Tickets are available by calling the Act II Box Office at (215) 654-0200 or online at www.act2.org.

Act II is at 56 East Butler Avenue, just a block from another venerable borough institution, The Shanachie Pub. Shanachie is also a show supporter. Look for an opening night appearance by the pub’s co-owner, singer Gerry Timlin.

P.S.: We’re supporters, too, even though it’s mostly moral support.

Editor’s note: Broadway and Irish actor Declan Mooney is stepping into the role of Charlie Conlon. Mooney, who joins Tony Braithwaite in rehearsal, replaces Chris Faith, who was forced to leave the show due to a family emergency.

Mooney will easily fill the shoes of Faith. He has performed the role of Charlie two other times, including as stand-in for Tony-nominated Conleth Hill in the Broadway production of the play. Dialect training will not be necessary for Mooney: He hails from Downpatrick in County Down, Ireland, and came to the States to attend college on a soccer scholarship.

August 22, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Arts

Bloomsday!

Bloomsday is the day on which protagonist Leopold Bloom made his “odyssey” through Dublin in James Joyce’s celebrated and controversial novel, Ulysses. Every year, the Rosenbach Museum and Library joins with Joyce lovers throughout the world to celebrate “Bloomsday” on June 16.

Hundreds gather on Delancey Place for this event, which features readings from Ulysses by notable Philadelphians from the steps of the museum. This year District Attorney Lynne Abraham, NPR’s Marty Moss-Coane and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell will be among the readers.

An exhibition of Joyce materials is also on view inside the museum, which is open to visitors all day.

For information, call 215-732-1600.

June 13, 2008 by Guest

Arts

Answered Prayers

Philadelphia documentary maker John Foley and Fergus O'Farrell.

Philadelphia film maker John Foley met Fergus O’Farrell in 2000, when the musician was working at the reception desk at the Hotel Eldon, which his father owned.

Foley had just cashed out of his dotcom business and was fulfilling a dream: to show his four children the places in Western Europe he had discovered on his business travels “and to go seek our Irish roots.”

I asked John about his friendship with Fergus and this is what he wrote:

My 4 children, Lauren, Sean, Ali, and Julian and I flew into Dublin, rented a van, and made our way from town to town, staying in B&B’s in most places to get to know the towns and the people better. We visited Limerick, Bunratty, The Burren, The Cliffs of Moher, Bantry, Kenmare, Cork City, Baltimore, Cobh, and some other towns as well.. Of course we spent a few days in Dingle and drove the Ring of Kerry.

We were interested in the story of Michael Collins, (ok, I was interested) and so we stayed at the Eldon Hotel in Skibbereen, where Collins had his last meal before his assassination.

This was in the third week of July 2000, and on the 17th, my youngest Julian turned 8. I wanted to get a little birthday cake and a gift for him but didn’t want to leave him alone. I asked the hotel proprietor, a cheerful man in a wheelchair named Fergus O’Farrell, if he wouldn’t mind looking after Julian while I ran an errand.

He and his wife Li were only too happy to help and so off I went to get a cake and a gift.

When I returned, Julian had fallen asleep in the lobby of the Eldon on a couch in the front room.

As we were leaving the hotel on the 18th of July, Fergus gave me two CD’s, and said “I’m a musician, here are some of my records, I hope you like them”. As we drove the road from Skibbereen to Cork City, I popped the CD in and the opening string parts of “Cain and Abel” played through the speakers. I almost drove off the road. I was a professional musician in the 70’s, and I still play when I can. I am a great fan of music and stay as active as I can to hear and learn the best music. This was some of the most beautiful, soulful, mature, and highly competent music I had heard in my life. I had no idea, but we were the guests of a musical genius – someone that the music intelligentsia of Ireland had known for some time – but sadly the international record labels had been keeping a secret.

Over the years I stayed in touch with Fergus, writing by e-mail frequently, speaking on the phone occasionally. I so much wanted to hear Ferg with his band Interference perform, but a throat condition and Ferg’s advancing MD were keeping him from singing and travelling.

Over the years I learned more about Interference – how they were actually a cult legend in Ireland, influencing top artists like the Frames and Hothouse Flowers. I also learned that they were sort of a super-group, as top musicians from Ireland and other parts of Europe would drift into and out of Interference to make records and perform very occasionally.

In about 2002 Fergus was feeling much better and interference began performing again. But their gigs always seemed to spring up very spontaneously and so getting to see them proved impossible. But all the while we continued to correspond and our friendship grew as we schemed to somehow get Interference noticed in America.

I fantasized about interference playing in America – that if I couldn’t get Mohammed to the mountain, maybe I could bring the mountain to Mohammed. The likelihood seemed slim.

By 2006 Ferg and Interference were playing more regularly and he was working on a new record. He sent me “sketches” of songs he was working on – essentially music tracks, maybe just chords, some a little more developed. He may have a verse or a chorus of lyrics, or in many cases he would scat the vocal melody so the lyrics could be developed later. His lyric collaborator, Malcom Mac Clancy, would frequently work that way. I sent Ferg lyrics for one track called “the na na song” (because he scatted the words na na na na na na for the melody), but he wrote back saying he didn’t feel they fit. I later spoke with Malcom about the sketches, and he said “You know, I love that na na song. I submitted two sets of lyrics to Ferg for it and he passed on both. I want to NAIL that song, I love it.” So apparently, the song is important to Ferg and I felt better about not having my lyrics picked.

In 2007, interference were (and in Ireland, that’s how they say it – “Interference are a band….”) scheduled to perform in the Czech Republic, and I tried to work it out to see them there, but I just could not make the arrangement work. Foiled again.

Instead, I decided to schedule a trip to visit Ferg in his home town of Schull in West Cork. There was an International Guitar Festival in Clonakilty in September, and I figured if I could not see Interference, I could hear good music and hang with Ferg and his wife Li.

After I made the arrangements, I happened to go see a little indie film called once at the little art house cinema in Bala Cynwyd. I had seen the trailers, and I knew that Glen Hansard was a wonderful musician and a friend of Fergus’, so I decided to go. About halfway through the movie, there is a scene in Glen’s kitchen where his friends gather for a round of Noble Calls – each person taking a turn singing a song. And there was Fergus and Interference singing one of my favorite songs, “Gold”! I jumped up from my seat and yelled out “atta boy Ferg!” Then I quickly sat down a little embarrassed, but the people around me were nice about it. He had never bothered to mention that he was in a film that would play in America.

The mountain had not come to Mohammed, but a film of the mountain had come.

The trip to Ferg’s along the Irish sea coast was stunning. I passed through the sea coast town of Bonmahon, where my great grandmother and her family had lived. According to civil records, her father was an “ore dresser” in the local copper mines. Being in this part of the world was so moving I had to divide my time between taking photos and videos, quiet reflection, and overwhelming emotion.

The time with Fergus in Schulll, a little sea coast town in West Cork, was wonderful. Sadly, Li was in China – her mother was not well and her amazing intuition told her to get to China right away. Her mother passed away while she was there.

We travelled to the Clonakilty International Guitar festival – and everywhere we went Ferg was treated as royalty. It was great fun getting the collateral royal treatment. Clonakilty is the birthplace of Michael Collins, and it was stirring to walk around town and see portraits and statues of him everywhere.

Ferg and I posed for a picture in front of General Collins in a local hotel where we had dinner.

We drove Ferg’s friend David Bickley home into the nether regions west of Clonakilty in the pouring rain, with me doing my best to drive Ferg’s wheelchair-capable van up winding country lanes with little paving and no light whatsoever. Add to that, the steering wheel was on the wrong side, it was a manual transmission, and the bushes on either side of the road scraped the sides of the van on the narrow rural lanes.

We dropped off David at his home and used the glow of the distant highway and dead reckoning to find our way back to the road to Schull. Somehow we wound up in front of Michael Collin’s homestead, the one that the Black and Tans had burned to the ground. I like to think the Lord was navigating that night.

The trip ended and it was back to America and reality, and Ferg and I continued to talk via email and telephone. In January, Ferg called excited beyond words that Swell Season were playing somewhere in New York, and that Interference had been invited to play – the entire 10 piece band!

I looked at the road schedule for Swell Season and saw that New York’s Radio City Music Hall was slated for May 19th, and Philadelphia’s Tower Theater was set for May 20th. The begging and pleading to get Interference to Philadelphia began immediately.

Word finally came sometime in March that indeed interference would open two shows for Swell Season – at Radio City and in Philadelphia. After eight years of hoping and waiting, the mountain was coming to Mohammed!

The rest of the story you know. Thanks so much for helping to bring out Ferg’s story – I love the guy – the music is a wonderful bonus.

May 30, 2008 by Denise Foley

Arts, People

She Knows the Real Ending of the Story Told in the Film “My Left Foot”

Hyacinthe O'Neill knew disabled writer/artist Christy Brown.

What Hollywood calls the “biopic” –biographical films like the recent Johnny Cash-June Carter homage, “I Walk the Line”—tend to treat the facts of a life as though they were Silly Putty, not concrete. What’s ugly is gussied up; what’s pretty is sometimes muddied. The ordinary moments are edited for the sake of drama; the extraordinary, exaggerated for the same reason.

But those who knew Christy Brown—the severely disabled Dubliner who gained fame by using the toes of his left foot to write and paint—say his portrayal by Oscar-winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, in the movie “My Left Foot” was uncannily accurate.

“He completely did it,” says Siobhan O’Neill of Philadelphia, who grew up in the same Dublin neighborhood as Brown, a close friend of her parents, Hugh and Hyacinthe O’Neill. “As a little kid, I used to sketch and I would sit and study people. My mother would tell me to stop staring. But Christy would hold his hands in such a twisted way that I can’t even imitate it, and Daniel did it, not even knowing Christy. It was like he was channeling Christy.”

Day-Lewis also captured Christy Brown’s dark side. “He was very funny, a bit of a genius, in some ways great, but in other ways he was terrible,” says Hyacinthe O’Neill, who became close to the Brown family (“his sister Anne was my best friend”) as a 19-year-old engaged to Hugh O’Neill, a lifelong friend of Christy’s youngest brother. “A mind so active as Christy’s, being shut up in a body that doesn’t work was torture. He was depressed a lot which may be why he drank so much.”

Hyacinthe O’Neill will share her reminiscences of Christy Brown next Thursday night at 7:30 PM when The Irish Film Series at Philadelphia’s Irish Center, concludes with “My Left Foot.” And she will provide the disturbing epilogue to Jim Sheridan’s uplifting but unsentimental movie that ends with Christy lifting a glass of champagne with the woman who eventually becomes his wife, Mary Carr. Hyacinthe O’Neill and her daughter sat down at the Irish Center this week to talk to www.irishphiladelphia.com about their old friend, who died in 1981.

Hyacyinthe O’Neill, the daughter of a British Army officer and an Anglo-Indian missionary’s daughter, spent much of her childhood in India where she attended boarding school with Nepalese princesses and a Thai king’s son. After Indian independence, her father left the military and became a policeman in Scotland. O’Neill was living in London when she met Irishman Hugh O’Neill whom she married and with whom she had three children. She lived most of her adult life in Ireland, much of it in the Dublin neighborhood where the Brown family—Christy was the ninth of 13 surviving children—lived.

“His mother was a saint,” says O’Neill, who now lives in Mt Airy and works as an accountant for a Manayunk firm after years in a family business in London and California. Though Brown’s mother was told by doctors that her son was hopelessly mentally disabled, she refused to believe it. And when he picked up a piece of chalk with the only part of his body he could move—his left foot–and tried writing words on the floor, she began to teach him to both read and write.

“There were always tons of visitors at the Brown house and there was always a huge pot of stew on no matter when you went there,” O’Neill recalls. “She was a wonderful woman. I don’t know how she coped with such a huge family and a son who needed so much, but I never saw her lose her temper.”

Not so Christy. “Oh, he swore all the time,” says Siobhan, who works in the admissions office at the University of Pennsylvania. “He had little tolerance for fools, though he was always nice to kids. He really liked children. When we were little, there were always parties at Christy’s house. There were famous people there, like Peter Sellers and Richard Harris, but I guess we were too little to appreciate that. We were bored stupid by them. So we would go up to Christy and ask him if we could play with his wheel chair and he would say yes, and off we’d go, racing each other up and down the way.”

The O’Neills would often give the Brown family a much-needed break, and whisk Christy away to a nearby lake where he could paint. Or down to the neighborhood pub, The Stone Boat. “Christy loved to drink,” says Hyacinthe O’Neill. “There was very little else for him to do besides read.” They would also travel with him to the north side of Dublin to hear his favorite musical group, The Dubliners.

While the film of his life isn’t sugar-coated, it also celebrates Christy’s indomitable spirit—though he knew he would never live like a normal man, he was determined to wring everything out of life that he could. But the ending, which hints that Christy found both fame and the love of his life, says O’Neill, wasn’t truly the end.

“It was a horror story in the end. It was heartbreaking,” she says.

In the film, the nurse (called Julia) Christy meets and falls in love with was actually a former prostitute and lesbian named Mary Carr, once briefly a dental assistant who couldn’t hold a job because of her drinking and drug use, a claim made by a controversial biography, “Christy Brown – The Life that Inspired My Left Foot” by British author Georgina Hambleton, published last summer. Though the movie shows Christy and his future wife meeting at a gala event in his honor, in the book Christy’s brother Sean says that he introduced the two. Mary Carr, he says, was the lesbian lover of a friend.

“Oh, she was terrible,” says Hyacinthe O’Neill of Mary Carr Brown, who, like Christy, has since died. “But after he met Mary and married her, Christy was happy. She was not ideal, but he had a companion, someone to talk to. He influenced her to read and they could talk about books. Whether it was obsession, which is probably was, not love, right to the end, no matter what she did, he wanted to be with her.”

What she did, says O’Neill, besides having affairs with both men and women, was neglect her invalid husband, whom she hustled away to an ocean-front cottage in Kerry to keep him hidden from the prying eyes of his anxious family. “We went down there once and found Christy in his wheelchair perched at the edge of a cliff, looking out at the sea alone,” says O’Neill. “And he was emaciated. I don’t think he’d eaten in weeks. Sometimes she would lock him up in the house, leave him with bottles of whiskey and a straw, and go away for God knows how long.”

Yet, hospitalized by his family in Dublin for malnutrition, “he still wanted to go back to her,” says O’Neill. “He said if they didn’t take him back, he would crawl on his hands and knees to get back to her.”

In 1981, Brown choked to death while eating dinner. “All his food had to be cut up into very small pieces so he could swallow it,” explains O’Neill. “He choked on a piece of meat that was too big.” The implication remains unsaid.

After Christy’s death, O’Neill recalls, Mary threw out many of his paintings. Her husband, Hugh, was so disturbed by this that he went into the dumpster and rescued as many of them as he could. For years, the O’Neills kept them in storage. “They moved with us everywhere we went, including to California,” she says. “In the movie, all the paintings you see were the ones we rescued. Anne [Brown] told the producers that we had them, and they borrowed them.”

Unfortunately, all of these early works were all lost when a friend of the O’Neills, a German art conservator who was in the middle of restoring them, died of a heart attack. “We don’t know where they ended up,” she says.

Although the O’Neills, like Christy’s family, believe Mary Carr’s neglect led to his untimely death at 49, they also believe—hope really—that his love for her, however unwarranted, was a source of his happiness to the end. “He was happy with her and he was happy when they moved to Kerry,” says Siobhan O’Neill. “Hopefully, he died happy.”

“My Left Foot” will be shown at the Irish Center, Carpenter and Emlen Streets, in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, on Thursday, May 1, at 7:30 PM. Hyacinthe O’Neill will introduce the film and answer audience questions. The Irish Film series was jointly sponsored by The Irish Center, WTMR radio host Marianne McDonald, and www.irishphiladelphia.com. Refreshments are available for purchase.

April 25, 2008 by Denise Foley

Arts

Irish Philadelphia Film Festival: The Commitments

Ladies and gentlemen ... The Commitments.

The Commitments

Released: 1991

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: They’re out of work. They live in Dublin’s working-class Northside neighborhood. They have negligible musical ability. And they’re Irish, of course. Naturally, they want to start an American-style Motown band, complete with Funk Brothers horn section and babelicious backup singers.

Initially, this loopy premise made sense only in the mind of author Roddy Doyle, who self-published his rollicking book “The Commitments” in 1987. In very short order, the idea went on to make sense to Doyle’s wildly enthusiastic audience.

Of course, to Doyle’s creation Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr.—the young, charismatic manager of The Commitments—it made perfect sense that a group of Dubs would want to play American soul music. After all, as Jimmy put it in his irresistable recruiting pitch to potential band members: “The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud.”

The lads (and the trio of “young wans” recruited to provide backup vocals and occasionally flash some leg) turn out to be blessed with talent. Guided by an old fella—horn player Joey “the Lips” Fagin, who claims to have backed up James Brown and most of the Motown masters—they live up to Jimmy’s expectations and quickly become Dublin’s “Saviours of Soul.” They’re a huge hit.

They are also disastrously dysfunctional.

Joey the Lips—a 40-ish, goggle-eyed, Jesus freak with a scraggly pony tail and bad teeth, and who still lives with his mother—quickly and unexpectedly claims the title of the band’s rakish Paddy. One by one, he woos the girls, sowing the seeds of jealousy and leaving the boys to puzzle over his mysterious appeal. But the source of most of the friction within the band is the lead singer Deco, who is blessed with a the perfect white soul voice—like a young Joe Cocker—and cursed with a toxic personality. Everyone in the band hates him—drummer Billy “The Animal” Mooney, most of all. Billy, who has already done time for assault, promises to kill him. (That is, when he’s not promising to assault Deco with a drumstick in a way that requires Vaseline.) For his part, Deco alternately hits on the girls in predictably seamy ways and despises them any time they get the chance to step out of his shadow.

Through it all, Jimmy sees The Commitments as the “band of destiny.” Sure, but destined for what? Will they a.) land that contract with the fella Dave from Eejit Records? Or b.) will they implode first? (If you don’t want to know, skip the rest.)

Why it’s one of the best: First off, it’s not just me who says so. Back in 2005, the good people who make Jameson’s Irish Whiskey (you may all bow your heads), together with The Dubliner Magazine, named “The Commitments” the best Irish movie of all time, based on votes from more than 10,000 movie fans.

And 10,000 rabid movie-goers can’t be wrong.

Alan Parker manages to capture all the grit and poverty of Doyle’s Northside, while at the same time revealing the brutal, profane honesty and desperate passion of the kids who form the band. He draws perfect, spot-on performances from his cast of unknowns.

And the music—well, The Commitments aren’t exactly the Funk Brothers, but they’ll do nicely in a pinch. What they lack in experience, they more than make up for in enthusiasm. These kids rock.

And, although The Commitments fall apart in spectacular fashion at the end, it’s hard to feel too disappointed. Because, regardless of the outcome, The Commitments is about the power of hope.

Jimmy Rabbitte, predictably, is crushed and angry when his dreams for The Commitments evaporate along with the band. But Joey the Lips sets him straight:

“You’re missin’ the point. The success of the band was irrelevant—you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure, we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way, it’s poetry.”

And it is.

P.S. for Parents: Massive F-bomb alert.

March 27, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Arts

Come to the Movies With Us!!

Visit “reel” Ireland starting on March 27 when the Irish Center, in cooperation with www.irishphiladelphia.com and WTMR radio host Marianne McDonald, presents a series of your favorite Irish films every Thursday night for six weeks.

The series, which will be shown at the Commodore Barry Club, Carpenter and Emlen Streets in Philadelphia, will open with the romantic comedy,The Boys and Girl from County Clare. The 2003 film from director John Irivn is the story of feuding brothers (Colm Meany and Bernard Hill) whose respective ceili bands go head-to-head at the All-Ireland music competition. Andrea Corr (of the Corrs) gives an outstanding performance as a young fiddler on whose questionable parentage the plot centers.

A discussion and a music session will follow the film, led by local musician Fintan Malone, a native of Miltown Malbay, County Clare, where the annual Willie Clancy Festival of traditional music is held every year, much of the action at his family’s pub, Tom Malone’s. Musicians are encouraged to bring their instruments.
Admission to the performances, which start at 7:30 PM, is free. Refreshments, including alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, and Barry Club Manager John Nolan’s famous fries (also known as Irish popcorn) will be available for sale.

Other films in the series will include:
April 3: The Secret of Roan Inish
April 10: Butcher Boy
April 17: The Snapper
April 24: Bloody Sunday
May 1:My Left Foot

March 26, 2008 by Jeff Meade

Arts

Irish Philadelphia Film Festival: The Butcher Boy

By Marianne MacDonald

The Butcher Boy

Released: 1997

Genre: Dark Comedy

Synopsis: “The Butcher Boy” is Neil Jordan’s adaptation of the shocking, award-winning novel by author Patrick McCabe. That book shook the modern Irish literary world on its publication in 1992.

I had read the book before seeing the movie, so I had some trepidation. I wondered whether the movie would accurately portray the vividly portrayed characters of McCabe’s novel. Never fear … the movie successfully captured, in rich detail, young Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), his Da (Stephen Rea at his usual brilliant best) and his Ma (Aisling Sullivan).

Set in the uneasy early ’60s at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the story depicts an Ireland quite unlike the Ireland of thatched cottages, peat bogs and fiddlers by the fireside.

Young Francie was a typical pre-teen lad bent on playing cops & robbers with his pal Joe, and tormenting the life out of prissy Philip Nugent and his mother, played with chilling acumen by Fiona Shaw. As the plot unwinds, we learn of the deadly illnesses inflicting Francie’s parents. Ma is a certifiable loon, listening to the song of the day, “The Butcher Boy,” over and over again, as she swings from manic bouts of baking to despairing depths of depression. Da is a washed-up musician suffering from the alcoholism all too common among Irish men. The best parts of their lives already seem to have passed them by.

Eventually tragedy strikes the Brady family and Francie begins his own descent into a life of violence and madness as he tries to make sense of what is totally senseless. He loses all that he loved, and so he comes to see the world as his enemy—and rightfully so. From the righteous prigs of the town who look down on Francie and his Da, to the pedophiliac priests, to the horrors of the mental hospital to which he is eventually consigned, Francie inspires in the viewer a righteous anger at a world too ready to dismiss the child as “evil, wicked and no better than a pig.” When Francie returns to the town that turned away from him, we find his escalating sense of anger and overwhelming need for revenge strangely comprehensible.

Why it’s one of the best: Watching “The Butcher Boy” is a bit liking watching an accident as it happens, but it is still an unforgettable film. I saw it first in the movies and then rented it to watch at home. I caught it on cable a few years later. I found myself telling friends about it. The movie shows a side of Ireland (and indeed, it could be small-town America as well) that Bord Failte would sooner you never saw, or were even aware of. As difficult as it is to witness Francie’s loss of innocence, there are memorable moments. For example, Sinead O’Connor turns up in an hysterical portrayal of the Virgin Mary, and veteran actors Brendan Gleason and Milo O’Shea portray pedophiliac priests in the boys’ home where Francie is sent.

There is surely a lesson to be learned from this film. Is the message that all children are a product of their environment, that it takes a village to raise or damn a child or that childhood is either hell or heaven? That’s up to the viewer to decide. What is certain, though, is this: Once you’ve seen the film “The Butcher Boy” you will remember the horrors that can be visited upon the young, whether here in the U.S., in “idyllic” small-town Ireland or in any corner of the globe.

Disclaimer: This film is rated R for profanity/violence/adult situations and is not for the faint of heart.

Marianne MacDonald is host of “Come West Along the Road,” broadcast Sundays at noon on WTMR-AM (800 AM), with archived shows available on the Web.

March 20, 2008 by Guest

Arts

Irish Philadelphia Film Festival: Waking Ned Devine

Waking Ned Devine

Released: 1998

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: Ned Devine, a bachelor farmer in the Irish town of Tullymore, wins the Irish National Lottery. His unbelievable luck is revealed to him one night as he sits in front of the telly, watching the numbered balls roll into place.

He’s thrilled. He’s shocked.

And, in moments, he’s dead.

Before long, word gets out that someone in the village has won the big prize—6.9 million pounds—but who is it? Ned’s not talking.

One of the elders of the village, Jackie O’Shea (Ian Bannen), sets about trying to find out. He enlists the aid of his wife Annie (the stunning Fionnula Flanagan) and his old chum Michael O’Sullivan (the diminutive David Kelly). In a campaign as cunning and subtle as the invasion of Poland (substitute a chicken dinner for the Stuka dive bombers) Jackie eventually rules out everyone in the village—everyone except one man.

Jackie and Michael go to visit Ned at his cottage—and there they discover the terrible truth. They find Ned in his comfy chair in front of the set, a smile frozen on his face, the winning ticket on the floor.

For a while, all seems lost. But then Jackie manages to convince himself that Ned would have wanted his two good friends in the village to share in his good fortune. He hatches a plot to persuade the lottery authorities that his pliant pal Michael is, in fact, the winner Ned Devine—but things rapidly spin out of control and, before long, the whole town is in on the action.

Will they be able to fool the lottery agent who comes to town in search of the winner? Will they persuade the town’s cantankerous, back-stabbing biddy to join the conspiracy—or will she turn them all in for the reward money?

Why It’s One of the Best: Written and directed by Kirk Jones, “Waking Ned” was one of the last films of veteran Scottish actor Ian Bannen. He died in 1999 in a traffic accident, just a year after this film was released. Let’s just say he saved his best for last. In the role of the conniving charmer Jackie O’Shea, Bannen is utterly convincing.

Then again, everyone in this fictional town seems real, from the grasping Lizzie Quinn (Eileen Dromey) to the tender-hearted but malodorous hog farmer “Pig” Finn (James Nesbitt, seen in “Bloody Sunday,” the first film we reviewed in this series). In a film that spans just an hour and a half, we somehow come to know everyone. It feels like we’ve always known them. Then again, if you grew up in a small town, as I did, then you probably have always known them.

Ultimately, “Ned Devine” is a charming confection of a film about friendship and the loving kindnesses of neighbors. It’s about the secrets we all know about each other, good and bad. It’s about community.

It’s also about lottery fraud, too, of course. Ah, but what harm is there in a bit of fraud among friends and neighbors? In the end, you’ll believe, as Jackie does, that Ned would have wanted it that way. So let’s all raise a glass to Ned Devine. And good night and joy be with you all.

March 18, 2008 by Jeff Meade

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