Dead orders at the Dockside
Emer O’Kelly sees a play that fails by any standard Last Orders at the Dockside Abbey Theatre The First Pegeen Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Dublin
DERMOT Bolger is an admired, even revered writer. Part of that stems from his extraordinary kindness to other writers, his encouragement for aspiring writers, and the energy and commitment he has put into the overall furtherance of his chosen art form. It makes writing a bad review of his work a distasteful and unpleasant task. But Last Orders at the Dockside, his new play (at the Abbey, and commissioned by Dublin Port) is poorly constructed, dull, and failing utterly in its appointed task of “celebrating” the long-disappeared traditional world of the Dublin Docks.
Last Orders at the Dockside is set on the evening of the Eurovision Song Contest of 1980. In the Dockside pub a family gathers to wake its paterfamilias, a life-long docker who oversaw the induction of his sons into the business.
His only daughter too, has married a docker. His widow mourns her lack of education, but her sons and son-in-law accept a world that sucked them into its maw when they were only 14. And Bolger puts them in a scenario that is a cross between sentimental slop and a ham-fisted attempt at a gangster story. Indeed, the play is not so much a celebration as a condemnation of a pitiless world of privation and corrupt savagery. It’s constructed as a series of single conversations between the characters. Two people seat themselves in a spot-lit table and despite being members of the same family, tell each other about themselves. Then they get up, stand at the back of the stage without moving or speaking while their place is taken by another pair.
The inaction is broken up by several characters breaking into song, accompanied by a single line of apparently inert customers who turn out to be musicians.
The cast includes such acclaimed stalwarts as Stephen Jones, Lisa Lambe, Aidan Kelly and Brid Ni Neachtain, but unfortunately, even they can’t make the play come alive.
But it is quite simply ground into the earth by direction (Graham McLaren) that is in my view undoubtedly one of the worst fiascos I have ever seen on a main stage. And there’s no pleasure in writing that.
Molly Allgood was an inveterate flirt; was jealous of her sister and fellow actor Sally Allgood; a bit of a termagant, and for her time could be considered a bit of a trollop.
But being one of the original “Abbey Players” and therefore part of the cultural wing of nationalism, she is more commonly painted merely as the “muse” of John Millington Synge… and of course, a woman of taste and sensibility as well as a model of propriety.
So George O’Brien’s monologue play The First Pegeen is as refreshing as it is culturally aware and true to reality.
Heaven knows, there’s plenty of evidence for the truth: during the three years of their relationship Synge bombarded Molly with letters castigating her for her appallingly loose behaviour with other men, and also instructing her on how to behave like a lady (suggestions she ignored).
But Molly (stage name Maire O’Neill, and the first actress to play Pegeen Mike in Playboy) wasn’t a lady. She was a tough working class inner city Dubliner. She was also beautiful, unlike her older sister Sara (Sally) but always felt overshadowed by Sally.
Synge was dazzled. But even when they became unofficially engaged, he refused to introduce her to his mother. Indeed, he went to considerable lengths to ensure that he and Molly were never seen together, in a manner indicating much more than embarrassment at the considerable difference in their ages.
Conclusion: he was ashamed of her. Again, revisionism blurs that out.
O’Brien sets Molly in his play on the day of Synge’s funeral in 1909, the only member of the Abbey company not to attend, wandering Dublin and recalling their relationship, with searing regret.
It’s a beautifully written piece: petulant and vulgar though she might have been, O’Brien’s writing and Rachel O’Byrne’s interpretation give Molly layers of pain and sweetness under Michael James Ford’s thoughtful direction.
Scenic design is by Jack Kirwan, costume by Nicola Burke, and lighting by Colm Maher.