a tale of two ditties

 

This one is true.

Back in the dulcet Summer of 2017, Kilcullen Drama Group were getting ready to produce a theatre play called The Two Loves Of Gabriel Foley which had been written by Westmeath playwright Jimmy Keary.

My Uncle Bernard was involved in the production and showed me the script.

The play was about a bachelor farmer and his adventures in love. There was a nice bit of cross dressing thrown in just to make it doubly wearisome.

I said it was undoable.

He asked me to doctor the script.

I rewrote the play as something I'd find amusing myself.

There was a bit where the hero preens in front of a mirror in a new shirt and does lines from various movies as he prepares for a date with a sexy girl. I gave him lines from The Termnator, Mel Gibson's Lethal Weapon, something referencing John Wayne and others.

"If you're lying... I'll be back... Get on your horse Pilgrim and drink your milk... Gabriel Foley, he's the only cop in LA whose body is registered as a... Lethal Weapon... (In Scarlett O'Hara's voice) Oh Rhett, Rhett, I love you so... (In Rhett Butler's voice) Frankly my dear I don't give a damn,,, Oh Rhett, Rhett, Rhett. (He commences to kiss and cuddle himself as the girl in the play walks into the room for real.)"

I added a bit where one guy says: "That's blackmail," and another guy says "You can't say blackmail," and the first guys says "Why not?" And the second guy says "It's racist. You have to say African American mail."

I was responsible for the exquisite renaming of a lead character  as Clive Snotley Green.

And I gave Clive Snotley Green and Gabriel Foley a little dialogue I stole from the Seinfeld TV series.

"I think you're being very rude."

"Well perhaps one of us should leave."

"It's my house."

There was also a bit of music hall style knockabout that I added where two guys are trying to revive someone who's fainted and one guy takes the pulse of the other guy not of the fainted person at all.

That old gag.

A classic.

Some of my finest uncredited work went into those plagiaristic rewrites.

Little gems.

How I would have loved to deliver some of those lines myself.

Or to see them performed before a live audience.

My sensation scene had the bachelor farmer fighting off advances from an insatiable woman he is not attracted to, with lots of farcical panting and pawing and the insatiable woman advancing on him unstoppably.

It was meant to push the boundaries a bit, again in the knockabout farcical music hall style, depicting what is very nearly a female attempted to rape a male.

This was long before the actor Johnny Depp through this year's court case against his psychotic wife Amber Heard kind of ruined the fantasy.

(Everyone prefers to say psychotic rather than evil.- Ed note)

(Too right Ed. Evil is scary. But who are you and how did you get in here? - Heelers note)

In my version of Jimmy Keary's play, the insatiable woman is only finally just barely repelled with the hero gabbling pejoratives about himself and desperately fishing for things in his mind for any thing that might possibly put her off:

"I'm attracted to people of the same gender."

"You're what?"

"I am a homosexual."

"What is this? The nineteenth century? No one uses that word nowadays. What on earth do you mean?"

"I'm gay." (This line is said with great wry fatalistic grimness because he's earlier told a friend that he associates the very word with schooldays bullying and considers it properly used to be a word for cheerfulness which has been hijacked just as the bullying situation in schools was hijacked, by activists propagandising for a homosexualist lifestyle. He adds that introducing children to speculations about sexual identity has induced homosexual behaviours in a generation and the whole misguided homosexual propaganda process has led inexorably to the propagandising of children today for transgenderism with educators acting on behalf of a thoroughly debased pharmaceutical industry whose only moral principle is the need to make a profit from its sex change drugs, routinely introducing ridiculously young kids to the romantic speculation that they might be men in women's bodies or vice versa.)

And the voracious woman says: "Oh goody, I love a challenge."

This brings about the hero's finest piece of rhetoric.

"Okay listen. I really can't make love to you... Look, look... I'm impotent... and I'm, I'm, look to be honest... No really. Get back. I know Karate... (At this point the woman throws him on to the floor with a Judo style cry of "Hai Yah." He scrambles to his feet and continues to plead.)... Look to be completely honest, it's a secret, but I'm here on leave from my real job, taking a little rest you see, overwhelmed with work, you see actually I'm a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Priests are not allowed to have sex. Ever. Well, hardly ever... and er, eh, and, and, and, oh heavens will you take your hands off me, listen, I've got gonorrhea... Will you listen to reason? Alright then I'm going to tell you the truth... I'm Muslim. Now you know. I can't have sex with you because you're an infidel. Allahhhhh U Akbarrrrrrrrrr!"

The Uncle excised some of my more out there notions, including that rape scene, and then rewrote the thing himself.

I pleaded with him briefly to retain the word "thesbians." which I think is the funniest word in the English language.

I am uncomfortable with words like "queer" and "fag" and "homo," and I usually refuse to even say the word "gay" for reasons similar to those enunciated by the character I'd written into Jimmy Keary's play, but Thesbian is hilarious.

It had a lovely seditious feel to it.

And it discomfits actors in an almost mysical way.

I begged the Uncle to keep it in the script.

He said he would.

Then he sent a letter to the playwright Jimmy Keary to ask him for permission to introduce the changes to the script.

With fine high dudgeon, Jimmy Keary as he was perfectly entitled to do, said no.

I suggested to the Uncle that many of us jobbing playwrights would be easily swayed by the offer of a few thousand pounds on top of the rights he was already to be paid for.

There's nothing like a couple of grand to focus the mind on the real issues.

That's my philosophy

The offer was made.

Jimmy Keary said no again in even more decisive terms.

"He's a better man than I," I muttered and gave up the ghost.

The play was never produced in Kilcullen.

A few years later my Uncle died still occasionally remarking on what might have been with that play.

Jimmy Keary's play from the Kilcullen Drama Group point of view, was put in a file and consigned to the realms of Wudda Cudda And Shudda.

Years went by.

Then a few months ago my Uncle's widow informed me that the play was to be performed after all.

The local hair dressing salon manager Eilis Philips who also produces plays had found an original script in the Drama Group files and was going to do it.

From far away Westmeath, Jimmy Keary had given his permission nay his benediction as long as none of mine or the Uncle's changes were in the script.

Eilis Philips told her cast that everything must be done exactly as in the script.

Vivian Clarke who was to play the lead in the original version rewritten by the Uncle and myself was recast in the new Eilis Philips production as the Mother.

The main role was to be filled by the accomplished avuncular Amnesty International supporting school teacher, founder of African house building charities and orphanages, left wing, atheistic, treehugging, fembo, commie, pinko, abortionist against the bomb, and occasional accidental guest star in my writings, Gerry O'Donoghue, who was returning to the stage after a break of forty years to play the lead.

Aside from his other manifold talents and personal accomplishments, Mr O'Donoghue is famous to posterity as the man whose wife Julie once castigated me in the street during a 1988 discussion on American foreign policy in the Philippines with the classic refutation of my political analysis to wit: "I know what you are. You are a lonely single man, about 32 years old with no friends who never goes to discos and in fact never goes anywhere."

The street was in Kilcullen by the way. Not the Philippines.

Her words were like a gypsy curse.

It all came true.

The only thing she was wrong about was that I was 22 not 32 at the time.

In fact as me and Julie O'Donoghue nee Bathe discussed the rights and wrongs of the political situation in the Philippines all those years ago with particular reference to my own lack of social nous, it seemed to me albeit briefly that if asked to pick between the then President of the Philippines Ferdinand E Marcos whose government she was seeking to bring down, and me, she would have had marginally more positive feelings for Mr Marcos.

But I digress.

So The Two Loves Of Gabriel Foley was to get a stage production after all.

"They should change the title to Eilis Philip's Farewell To Good Taste," I muttered darkly. "But I betchya Aunt that Uncle Bernard will be watching it from heaven. This would be too fascinating to miss. You know we genuinely thought the original was unperformable. And we thought we'd turned it into something good. How bad is it going to be?"

"Will you go?" said the aunt.

"Not while the Drama Group is associating with the lowlife thug ex cop Stephen Kinneaey who has harassed me for over a decade."

"You should go."

"Who's in it?"

"Gerry O'Donoghue and Vivian Clarke."

(This was how I found out the names of the aforementioned cast members.)

"I'd prefer you to just shoot me."

Now gentle readers, I have to admit that at this point I felt a slightly unworthy desire that the production might fail.

I wanted it to fail for all the reasons that originally led me to declare it unperformable.

I wanted it to fail because Gerry O'Donoghue was playing the lead and aside from the historic light hearted spats with his wife about the Philippines, I still held a mild animus towards him for an incident a decade ago when he'd nixed one of my plays being staged for his African house building charity simply because I'd shamelessly slandered his charity in my light hearted comic stylings on this website and broadcaster Brian Byrne had outed me for doing so on his complete arse of a blog.

I wanted it to fail for Vivian Clarke and Eilis Philips' sake.

And I wanted it to fail because no Drama Group should be associating with a low brow like Stephen Kinneavey.

"I want it to fail Aunt," I said. "Is that wrong of me? I'd love to have seen my rewrites on stage but I have no interest in the rubbish they're about to put on."

Well folks.

The play went into rehearsal for a few months.

I heard very little about what was going on but I  did hear that rehearsals were progressing well.

I also heard that Vivian Clarke had been on the phone to the playwright Jimmy Keary.

"That f***ing b****** who tried to change it the last time, better not make an changes this time," warned Mr Keary.

"I think I can promise you he won't be changing a word," Vivian Clarke reassured the angst ridden playwright. "Because he's dead."

There was one bit of light relief when I heard director Eilis Philips had taken a part herself in the production and had fainted during rehearsals and broken a rib.

Other tantalising snippets of information leaked out from rehearsals vis a vis this same Eilis Philips sticking rigorously to Jimmy Keary's original script and repeatedly admonishing her actors lest they forget, that nothing was to be changed.

Even on opening night she was said to have insisted that the playwright be informed that her character couldn't fall exactly as he'd written a fall for her because she'd broken a rib in rehearsals.

So folks.

Here we are.

The play has been on stage for the last few weeks.

It's a hit.

Standing ovations and all that.

And tonight my Aunty Mary called to the house to tell me a curious thing.

The playwright Jimmy Keary himself had travelled from Westmeath to watch the show last week.

After ten minutes he stood up, strode out across the front of the stage and thundered "This isn't my play."

Colour me fascinated.

But what had happened?

Here is the news.

When first thinking of staging The Two Loves Of Gabriel Foley, producer Eilis Philips had found what she thought was an original script in the filing system down in the theatre.

It was this she had copied for her actors and produced on stage.

And unbeknownst to that incomparable doophus Eilis Philips, the original script she just had photocopied was the one rewritten by Uncle Bernard and me, and then retyped by me with all our notes and suggested alterations included.

"Was it funny?" I asked the Aunt.

"It was hilarious," she replied.

"Did Gerry O'Donoghue preen in front of the mirror saying lines from movies?"

"He did. It was a howl."

"Was the bit in it about African American mail?"

"It was."

"Did they have the bit where the guy was taking an unconscious person's pulse and the other guy says: "That's my wrist you're holding, you gobdaw?"

"They did. The audience loved it."

"Did they keep the name Clive Snotley Green?"

"Harry Murphy played him. He was very good. He had a wispy little moustache and he was just perfect. The way he said the name Clive Snotley Green with such pride. By the way the change of name was one of the things that really annoyed the playwright the night he was there."

"Did they have the Seinfeld bit about one of us should leave, and the other guy saying it's my house?"

"They did."

"Did Gerry O'Donohgue fondle himself in front of the mirror while doing lines from gone with the wind in Rhett and Scarlett's voices before being discovered?"

"He did. It was priceless."

"Did he dance with a broom as though the broom were a girl?"

"Yes. The audience was in fits of laughter."

Well, well, well.

What a rum world.

All those changes and Uncle Bernard's more copious dynamic change which he and I never expected to see on stage have found their public after all.

And Eilis Philips didn't let her actors change a single one of my rewrites.

You know, I'm beginning to like that girl.

Taste.

Good taste.

That's what she's got.

Even if she doesn't know what day of the week it is.

As for Gerry O'Donoghue who couldn't tolerate one of my plays being put on in support of his charity by other actors for a single night, the great O'Donoghue on his return to the stage after thirty years, has without his knowledge himself been performing in the starring role in a James Healy play for the past two weeks.

Now that's comedy.

But the thing's a hit.

In a way I'm glad.

I wonder what Uncle Barney thought of it.

I'm blooming sure that in some mystical sense he was fully aware of everything if not directly involved in the outcome as a ghostly co producer.

And since Jimmy Keary has announced to the world that he didn't write the thing, will Kilcullen Drama Group now send me the royalties and performance fees which I am clearly owed?

Will they do the decent thing and pay me for my little gems?

I think we should be told.

Of course when they're sending on due payment, it is only right and fair that they should deduct the tenner I still owe Eilis Phillips for the last haircut she gave me.