These are some of my favourite moments.
That quiet time when the audience is settled in their seats, the show has begun and you can sit in the foyer. On closing night. Hearing the lines you know too well emanate from the stage. Lines that cut through you in their clarity, their brilliance, their humour. Lines delivered in accents that are almost familiar. Words that you don’t often hear in a September spring. Words more suited to when and where they are set. Words like Howth and Jaysus and Santy. Cold words for a cold place.
And you hear laughter. For even if the words are cold and the place is cold, there’s a humour to them that warms you. That makes you smile. A Dublin humour. Cut through with wit and bitterness and that rhythm of speech you find on,y in those few miles that circle the Liffey. And even if the stage accents may not be as bleedin perfect as they could be, they’ve found the rhythm and the humour. And the bitterness and the wit.
It’s almost interval. When the crowds will come out looking for wine and tea and sweets in a box. There was a run on the red this evening. Which was unexpected. Given that it was the first warm day in months. But they all wanted red wine. God knows what they’ll want at interval.
Then they’ll go back in for the second act and it will get quiet again. For another hour or so. Til it’s done. After all the rehearsals, all the costume fittings, all the prop gathering, all the set building, all the set dressing, all the line learning, all the dialogue training, all the performances. It’ll be done.
And we will gather the props to return them to their homes. Wash the costumes. Dismantle the set. And start again.
It’s been a blast this one. A motley crew of men coming together for a show. A brace of women to dress them and manage them into some sort of shape.
These are some of my favourite moments. These ones where it is almost done.
Thanks, the Seafarers.
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