IT IS always fascinating to see a new writer emerge on the scene and this year’s Galway Arts Festival witnesses the stage debut of Cavan playwright John McManus with his comedy The Quare Land, staged by Decadent Theatre Co.
McManus, from Ballyconnell, won a PJ O’Connor Award for Radio Drama with his first play in 2005. His first stage script, 2008’s A Lock of Fierce Roars, was given a public reading by Druid as part of that year’s Druid Debut series.
The latter play signalled that McManus was a writer to note, with one observer, playwright Allan Pollock, later writing that it was “one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve ever had inside a theatre and certainly at a play-reading”.
Pollock enthused about the “fierce, foul-mouthed energy” of McManus’s “vigorous Cavan-set comedy about about one man’s fierce fight to hold onto his loot, and the thieving bastards who are trying to get it off him”.
Loot and avarice also feature prominently in The Quare Land. Gnarly old-timer Hugh Pugh, a sort of Cavan Steptoe, is taking his first bath in four years when he receives a visit from developer-on-the-make Rob McNulty, desperate to buy one of Hugh’s fields which he needs for a big-money development.
A caustic-tongued tussle of wits ensues between the duo which escalates to an epic finale.
Over an afternoon coffee in Kelly’s bar, McManus meets up to talk about his work. I begin by asking whether he was always interested in writing.
“Not really!” he laughs. “I usen’t even go to plays. I hadn’t even listened to a radio play before doing the one for RTÉ. They send out a form inviting submissions for the PJ O’Connor awards.
“They had guidelines of how you set a script out and so I did that and sent it in and it won. I did another radio play after that and then I wrote A Lock of Fierce Roars and sent it to Druid and they did it as one of the Debuts.”
McManus reflects on the experience of working with Druid and Garry Hynes, who directed the reading of A Lock of Fierce Roars.
“It was really good, even though it was only a couple of days’ work.” he declares. “We had brilliant actors, Pat Shortt and Eamon Owens, and Tom Hickey. Tom Hickey especially really brought it to life, I think he did more than he had to, considering it was just a reading.”
That Druid Debut presentation was part of the 2008 Galway Arts Festival programme, so it’s fitting that this year’s festival should feature McManus’s first full production. He explains how it came about.
“I sent The Quare Land to the Galway Theatre Festival last October in response to an a call they put out for scripts,” he says. “It got a reading then and here it is being staged less than a year later.
“That’s a really quick turnaround, so kudos to them for that. The Galway Theatre Festival has been really good for me. I was actually about to give up writing, I’d decided it would be my last attempt. The GTF rescued me in terms of writing!”
Following its well-received rehearsed reading at the Galway Theatre Festival, The Quare Land was taken up by Decadent Theatre Company. It will be directed by Rod Goodall and features the considerable acting talents of Des Keogh and Michael O’Sullivan respectively as Hugh Pugh and Rob McNulty.
The Quare Land shares themes of greed and money with A Lock of Fierce Roars. So are these themes specially relevant to Cavan or ones that specially inspire McManus?
“There’s that old cliche about ‘mean Cavan bastards’ so if you’re going to do a play about greedy people that’s the right place to set it!” he notes wryly. “A Lock of Fierce Roars was set in 2002 at the time of the euro changeover and I think at the time Ireland was a pretty greedy country, everyone was trying to get a piece of the pie.
“In The Quare Land, Hugh is greedy in so far as he keeps asking for more money but in another way he’s not really. He doesn’t really want the money at all, he just wants to get the better of Rob.
“My starting idea for The Quare Land was just to set a play in a bathroom because most plays are set in a kitchen and I had this image of an old man about to have a bath and then someone barging in on him. So far all my plays have been comic. I used to have a rule funny first everything else second, now I say dramatic first, funny second, then everything else.”
Galway audiences can doubtless look forward to The Quare Land being both a dramatic and funny treat.
The Quare Land runs at the Nuns Island Theatre from Monday July 12 to Saturday 24 (excluding Sundays ) at 8pm. Tickets are available from The festival box office, Galway Tourist Office, Forster Street, and www.galwayartsfestival.com
