EOIN HANCOCK just wants break. He wants to clean up his act, detox himself, put his dissolute past behind him, and live a healthier, simpler, life. Some hope when your friends are pot heads, boozers, and hell raisers.
This is Who Needs Enemies? the debut play of Conor Montague, which returns to the Town Hall Theatre this Monday at 8pm. The play, a runaway success during the Galway Comedy Festival, returns now in an extended form and with a Christmas twist for this seasonal performance.
Eoin Hancock has just returned from a retreat in the Himalayan wilderness. In order to stay off booze and drugs, he knows he has to ditch his rowdy friends. Unfortunately they have no intention of leaving him alone. Late one Saturday night, Eoin’s friends arrive unannounced and gradually chip away at his resistance as the night descends into an orgy of alcohol, bestiality, and a cocaine blizzard.
Playwright Conor Montague is known to many as DJ Monty, who DJs after the Laughter Lounge in the Róisín Dubh on Wednesdays. However he is also a member of the Atlantis Collective writers group and he is working on a PhD in NUI, Galway, examining the letters written by members of the Irish Literary Revival.
So where did the inspiration for Who Needs Enemies? come from?
“I ran Vagabonds in Salthill for four years and after that I worked in the GPO nightclub and a lot of the material for the play is taken from those years,” Conor tells me during our Monday afternoon interview. “I would have gone to a lot of dance festivals in the 1990s and I would have seen a lot of characters like those depicted in the play.
“The character I play, Bottle, is really dodgy, has violent reactions, and is a small time cocaine dealer. The rest are the sort of people who would arrive at three or four in the morning to your house, climbing in windows, and think nothing of it.
“Eoin, who is played by Mark Dooley, is a guy who is trying to get over all that, and if he can just make it past Christmas he’ll be OK, but his friends come along and wear him down.
“I’ve seen a lot of people who didn’t have the ability to get over that kind of thing. Everybody is responsible for their own actions, but a lot of people who got caught up in that did not have the will or ability to get out of it. There is a lot of black humour in Who Needs Enemies?”
Given that Conor is also a DJ, it is not surprising music features strongly in the play.
“The play starts out with Eoin meditating. There is incense and candles and it’s the most blissed out scene during the play,” says Conor. “He is listening to Buddhist chanting while he is meditating. We have Leftfield’s ‘Original’ for the tripping scene, and The Beatles’ ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ for the finale.”
Conor has been delighted by the response to the play. “The reaction has been amazing,” he says. “People have come up to me saying ‘I know people like that!’ and even mothers have said ‘I remember those days!’ They’ve never done cocaine, but it’s the dynamics of what is happening and the being influenced to do stuff that they recognise.”
Who Needs Enemies? has also received great support from actor/director Rod Goodall, who has worked with the writer and cast in staging the play; the Róisín Dubh’s Kevin Healy, who included it on the comedy festival bill, and, who, along with the Town Hall Theatre’s Mike Diskin, has encouraged Conor to revive the play.
Conor hopes Who Needs Enemies? marks the start of further writing endeavours. He is currently working on some short stories and developing ideas for new plays, while his travelogue of India, provisionally titled Cowboys and Indians, is due to be published next year.
The cast of Who Needs Enemies? is John Donnellan, Ray Kelly, Mark Dooley, Conor Montague, Ciara Brady, Roland Mupotsa, John Lally, and Dermot Duignan.
Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie Monday’s performances will also be filmed for a documentary.
