What Did You Do on the Weekend?

Well, funny you should ask…

Two weekends ago, a friend of mine, Simon Ricketts, called, a bit out of the blue, and said he was passing through Mayo and could we perhaps meet up for a while?  He was over from England, touring the country for ten days or so and Castlebar was on his route.  So, hell yeah, I could meet up.

We took the day and we spinned around my (adopted) home county of Mayo in my car.

Before he arrived, I was in a bit of a quandary.  What do you show visitors in Mayo?  I don’t do an awful lot of this kind of thing.  I knew Simon would be happy with a meet up and a coffee and a bit-of-a-chat but I wanted to show him around a little and I wanted to hang onto him for longer than an hour while he was here, cause he’s a really sound chap.

But what do you show people in Mayo?

I learned a couple of things on our journey through Mayo a few Saturdays ago.  I learned that seeing a place is not necessarily about going to a particular monument or vista, it’s not about ‘taking something in’.  It’s much more about simply being in the place, moving through it, nosing around it, smelling and hearing it too.

We drove around for hours on end.   We stood on deserted beaches and under cloudy mountains, we sipped a drink in a roadside hostelry, watch kids dipping in a drizzly evening harbour, heard some music in a crowded friendly pub and had a late pint in a sociable corner.

We didn’t see anything that would qualify as a show-stopper or a big event.  We just took a little time and had a good old nose-around and, you know what? It was bloody great.

So that’s the first thing I learned: don’t just see the high-spots, try to ‘be’ in a place.

The second thing I learned relates to how very lucky I am to live in a place like this.

We’re like rabbits, aren’t we?  We cut a track in the grass between our burrow and the places we go out into, to eat and to shit.  We often don’t deviate much from those tracks.  But to do it – to stray off the beaten track, even if for only a day – can open your eyes to where you are.  It did for me anyway.

For instance, we drove down the ‘Atlantic Drive’ towards and then onto Achill Island.  My God, what a wonderful road!  Edging along the ocean, dotted with fearless defiant sheep. It is a high road, a slender road and, by God, an isolated one.  I’d been there before but I was going somewhere else, I wasn’t there just for the sake of it.  To do that... it was an eye opener for me.

Even to be in the pub, with the music playing, and to look around and see all the people having a good time and knowing I’d usually be dozing in the recliner by now.  There’s a life to be lived just outside of our rabbit runs and it’s in your place just as much as it is in mine.

So thanks, Simon, for coming by.  I kind-of alluded to it on the day - and I know it sounds odd - but there’s a genuine feeling that, by coming to my country and driving and eating and drinking and chatting and… just… seeing… well, you honoured us.  Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds stupid but I did feel something like that.  You were enjoying yourself so well that you were doing us proud.

So thanks mate, come again soon, eh?


FOOTNOTE:  Simon kindly provided me with this link to some of the live music we heard in Matt Molloys in Westport on the Saturday evening.  It's here.

Waiting for Ever – The Godot Bus Rolls into Castlebar

In 1987, Samuel Beckett asked Michael Colgan to produce ‘Waiting for Godot’ at the Gate, and requested that Walter Asmus - his assistant director on the famous Schiller Theatre production - direct.

Hailed by the international press as “the definitive Godot”, this production has since toured all over the world, including China, Melbourne and Toronto, receiving unprecedented critical acclaim. It was also a central part of the Gate’s Beckett Festivals in Dublin (1991 and 2006), New York (1996) and London (1999 and 2006).

As part of the theatre’s 80th anniversary celebrations, the Gate’s acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot will tour to 40 venues across the 32 counties of Ireland, playing for one night only in each venue. The tour, which will also mark the 20th anniversary of this now legendary production, will include the original cast members.

(Borrowed – respectfully - from the Gate Theatre website)

Ever since I heard about this, I’ve been waiting for Godot to arrive.

I was quite disturbingly excited that this wonderful production would come and play in my local theatre – a place I know and love very well.

The Castlebar performance was sold out months in advance and the day itself did not disappoint.

From early morning the techies were in, shifting, building and lighting the simple-yet-deceptively-complex stage set. In the late afternoon, a series of parking spaces were cordoned off out on the street and a little later the ‘Godot Bus’ arrived with the cast on board.

These venerable actors are certainly traversing the country in some style. The huge bus is emblazoned with the iconic image from the production – Vladimir supplicant to the moon – and it was great to see a piece of theatre bring with it this level of buzz and excitement. Great? It was bloody amazing.

So I went to see the play and I really loved it. I really did. However I felt a bit strange afterward telling people how great I thought it was because the general vibe among the post-show audience was that it was ‘heavy’, ‘hard-to-follow’, ‘obtuse’ and/or ‘nothing happened.

This all surprised me. You see I’m not an intellectual guy – you’ll have picked that up if you’ve been visiting here for a while – I tend to gravitate towards ‘easy’, ‘entertaining’ things. Heavyweight tomes can leave me cold.

I just didn’t find Godot to be hard-going at all. I think it’s funny, moving, emotionally involving, touching, thoughtful, witty, smart, and fun… yes fun.

So when some people were busy telling me how bemused they were by it all, I initially thought I understood – I though they had brought all their prejudices into the theatre with them. They expected ‘tough-going’ and a ‘lack of incident’ and so that’s what they got.

I’ve changed my mind about that since. Upon ‘mature reflection’ as some of our politicians say.

Here’s what I think now:

I think I enjoyed it more because I’ve spent time with it over the last few years.

I was involved in a rehearsed reading of the play a few years ago – I played Estragon and we had a lot of fun with it and it went over pretty well with the full house. In boning-up for the part, I re-read the play many times and I also watched the Gate Production on DVD several times – the self-same production that has now played Castlebar.

My new theory is that my ‘little learning’ helped me enormously in enjoying the play on the night. It is a lesson I intend to remember.

The cast who came to give us the play were exemplary – and I mean exactly that. There was no weak link in that foursome.

But for me, having now seen it again, I am more convinced that ever that Godot is not an ensemble piece. For me Godot has a ‘hero’ – a central character. That hero is Vladimir. Even Estragon, who shares so much time with Vladimir seems dependent and somehow secondary to him.

Vladimir seems to me to be heroic – an ‘everyman’ lost in a meaningless world, looking out for redemption but never losing sight of the truth of the repetitive, time-killing, pointless nature of his existence.

When ever I go to see a play, I love to become engrossed in the ‘show’ but I also love to pull back the curtain of artifice afterward and learn as much as I can about how it was from the stage looking down into the audience.

I met the cast of Godot afterward (no great trick to that, anyone who wants to can do it) and I greatly enjoyed speaking briefly to them all. The actors impression of our Castlebar audience seemed (to me) to be that we were a quiet, slightly-unresponsive lot. I have to say that wasn’t my impression.

The production made use of enormous freezes in the action where everybody sits immobile and silent… and waits. In Castlebar the audience waited right along with them.

This impressed me quite a lot and I though it actually worked very well. I would imagine other audiences might have shuffled and giggled nervously at these moments – as time seemed to stop completely. But we were very well behaved – at least I think so anyway.

So – listen - if the Godot Bus comes up your road in the next few weeks, do flag it down and try to persuade it to stop for a night and play.

Finally, let me share this little titbit (are there any big titbits?) with you. My good friend Mary Carr passed this on to me.

Where does the name ‘Godot’ derive from?

Many people say it refers to ‘God’ and that carries a little weight (I suppose). Mary has a good angle on it which I never heard before. Beckett was Irish (‘go way! … no he was!) and was familiar with the Irish language.

In Irish, ‘Go Deo’ (pronounced ‘guh joe’) means ‘forever’. This, she reckons, is where ‘Godot’ came from… ‘Waiting for Forever’ and that’s where my title for this post came from too.

Eh?