DERMOT BOLGER’S acclaimed recent play, The Parting Glass comes to the Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday May 31 and Wednesday June 1. This one-man play, performed by Ray Yeates, about a returned emigrant’s experience of contemporary Ireland in the boom to bust years, has been a hit in Dublin and New York, and now embarks on a tour of Ireland.
The Parting Glass is set on the infamous night in Paris when Thierry Henry caused Ireland’s exit from the 2010 World Cup. Henry’s sleight of hand is used by writer Dermot Bolger as a metaphor for the speedy deception experienced by people in post-boom Ireland.
After emigrating to Germany to find work during the 1980s, Eoin made a new life for himself with the help of his wife Frieda and son Dieter. He returned to Ireland at the height of the boom, and just in time for the bust “where Dorset Street has become so posh that all the women have turned blonde...and the girls buying John Player Blue at Hardwick Street flats have a different pair of pyjamas to wear to the shops everyday”.
A stand-alone play, The Parting Glass is also a sequel to Dermot Bolger’s classic 1990 play In High Germany, which was set during Euro 88 and staged internationally.
While In High Germany captured the pre-Celtic Tiger mood of a generation forced to emigrate out of economic necessity, The Parting Glass highlights the pattern of emigration re-emerging 20 years on among Ireland’s current generation - a cycle we thought we had banished forever.
Bolger infuses the play with much humour and mischievous Dublin wit. Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Bolger sweeps his audience along with a poignant and moving monologue, delivered with great fun and tenderness by actor Ray Yeates.
A powerful, passionate and funny meditation on the state of Eoin mid-life and Ireland mid-bust, The Parting Glass leaves no target untouched in a searing interrogation of friendship, family and Anglo Irish Bank shares. It is directed by Mark O’Brien and designed by artist Robert Ballagh.
After its Dublin première in June last year, the play was presented at New York’s prestigious PS 122, as part of the city’s Off Broadway Undergroundzero theatre festival. Ray Yeates’ powerful performance was enthusiastically received by Irish and New York audiences and critics. The production received record audiences, standing ovations and four-star reviews. The play was credited in New York as “the festival’s most affecting work”.
Speaking ahead of The Parting Glass’s Galway performances, Yeates outlined the ways in which the life of its main character, Eoin, has evolved in the years since audiences first encountered him in In High Germany.
“When we left Eoin in the earlier play he doesn’t envisage ever returning to Ireland, he’s making a new life for himself in Germany,” says Yeates, “but then his mother becomes ill back home and that prompts him to return, to help care for her.
“He also wants his son Dieter to know Ireland better because, as the play says, Dieter has only visited the country four times, ‘though that’s three times more than some of the Irish international players’.
“The play also reintroduces us to Eoin’s friends Shane and Mick who he’d lost touch with - although it turns out Mick has died in New York and his ashes arrive home in an urn in the post. Eoin is back in Ireland when the economic crash kicks in and when we meet him in the aftermath of that Thierry Henry match he’s at the airport saying goodbye to his son who is emigrating to Canada.”
With the exploits and travails of the Irish soccer team forming the backdrop to the play’s action, what insights to the team’s place in Irish life does Bolger offer?
“He uses the team as a metaphor for Irish identity,” Yeates replies. “Eoin remarks at one point how these 11 guys dressed in green feel like the only Ireland he wants to belong to. The fact that not all the players were born in Ireland shows that being Irish in this day and age can mean so many complex things, it’s no longer just a case of coming from the country - like Eoin’s own son who was born in Germany.”
The play also reflects on the circumstances of the country’s calamitous economic crash, as Yeates explains.
“Eoin says at one point that Thierry Henry ended up apologising for his handball but there are lots of individuals who led us into the crash who still haven’t apologised,” he says, “but the play doesn’t suggest any answers to the problems we find ourselves in.
“In fact you could say it’s about someone who doesn’t know the answer to these things and is just trying his best to make sense of it all, I think that’s one of the reasons it actually connects with audiences.”
While much of the play explores the world of lads and football, Yeates observes that its appeal is much broader than that.
“Even though the play is all about males and male friendship I’ve found from doing it that women really love it as well,” he says. “It’s hopeful and funny and relates this universal story about a guy and his family just trying to get on with their lives in difficult times.
“Audiences across the board really connect with that and respond to it. Eoin can be hilarious in telling the story of his life and the play has an affecting blend of humour and pathos. At the end of the play Eoin remarks, ‘My life is only at half-time with extra time still to come’ so it strikes that note of hope.”
While Yeates is generous in his praise of Bolger’s script, and of the contributions of director Mark O’Brien and designer Robert Ballagh, his own performance has been widely lauded by reviewers. The Sunday Business Post declared that ‘Yeates’s performance is engaging and understated. He carries the audience on waves of humour, eliciting familiar emotions and at times, surprise’ and The Irish Times enthused that “Ray Yeates delivers this monologue play with verve and excellent comic timing.”
All in all, a play well worth seeing.
Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
