STORYTELLING:You never know what you might stumble upon on a stray night in Connemara. In this pub, drinking takes second place to storytelling
AROUND EIGHT O'CLOCK, it starts to get crowded. I've been sitting here, with my bottle of Miller and my Newsweek, for quite a while. In this Connemara pub, I couldn't look more like a blow-in if I had orange ears and five eyes.
But that doesn't matter. I know, because I've been coming to Paddy Coyne's in Tullycross for years, sitting by the fire in the cosy front room. I still smile when I see the sign over the bar: "No Credit Given to Women" (beside it there is one that reads simply, "No Credit"). Wednesday is the best night here.
As I finish my beer, summer tourists are drifting in - a French family, an English family, some Italian students . . . They come in the front door and go out the back, brushing past the nonplussed locals. Some of the locals get up and join them. Different accents and languages are heard in the queue to leave. Everyone (except children) pays €5 to walk out of the pub.
Outside, there is a small blackboard with "Smoking Area" chalked on to it, and a sign pointing towards the "Beer Garden". Tonight, however, there is no beer garden. Under the hanging baskets and the old beer ads, there is a stage.
"Can everybody get really close to one another - that's what it's all about in Connemara," Seán Coyne says with a wink.
"We're close enough to you, Seán, thanks!" someone yells.
The rest of us shuffle our chairs closer together, so there's enough space for everyone.
Drama in the Garden (read: "Drama in the Smoking Area") is performed in Paddy Coyne's every Wednesday by husband and wife Seán Coyne and Tegolin Knowland. The plays are local stories or histories of nearby places such as Kylemore Abbey and Renvyle House Hotel. Tonight's performance is The Donkey, a tale told at house parties around the area by local man Martin Conneely in the 1950s. Tegolin's father, Prof Tony Knowland, recorded Conneely's stories so they wouldn't be lost, and they are now archived in Trinity College. Tegolin's mother, Barbara, wrote this dramatisation. After the play, Seán and Tegolin's daughter Amy will perform Renvyle by the Sea, a story and a song with a dance at the end. "And if anybody has a mobile phone - there's a bucket over there filled with water," Seán concludes.
There's a gust of wind and the show begins - Seán is the hapless Joe Flaherty, walking from Connemara to Cork in search of a donkey. Along the way, however, Joe finds himself in hell, crossing words with the devil. Well, it's not really hell, it's actually a coal mine. And it's not really the devil, it's just a coal miner with a lantern, big goggles and a helmet pretending to be a devil so he can steal Joe's only pound note . . . but you had to be there.
"It is a strange mix," Tegolin says of their audiences of curious tourists and heckling locals. We're standing at the bar after the performance, while a céilí with Jackie the Culfin Angler gets going behind us. Strange audiences, indeed. During one show a few years ago, Seán was assaulted by a neighbour who was rather hard of hearing. Seán had been drinking. It's an occupational hazard: during The Donkey, for entirely legitimate artistic purposes, he has to down a pint of Guinness and a couple of whiskeys. The neighbour's walking stick cracked across his legs: "Seán Coyne is drunk!"
Tegolin and Seán are co-founders of two theatre companies - Hobnailed Boots and Tegolin's Tales - whose origins date back 20 years and have toured throughout Ireland and England. What's the appeal of putting on plays in the smoking area of a pub in Connemara? "The close contact with the audience," according to Seán, and Tegolin nods. When Seán's character in The Donkey is greeting people in a Connemara pub, Seán is actually greeting people in a Connemara pub. "I can say 'Howya, Tommy', 'Howya, John' and really be shaking people's hands." Well, okay - but it's still odd to find plays being performed . . . in the smoking area . . . of a Connemara pub. "There isn't much like it anywhere else," Tegolin admits. But then, Paddy Coyne's is steeped in little bits of history. Established in 1811, it's been owned by the same family ever since. It was a ticket agent for the White Star Line (the Titanic) and the Cunard Line (the Lusitania). Famous talents who've passed through include Fred Astaire, Richard Harris, John Hurt, Seán Bean and Bono, and the pub featured in a Guinness ad for Israeli TV.
Later, Seán's brother Gerry, who runs the pub, tells me an old Paddy Coyne's story. Long ago, there was apparently a "sign rivalry" between Mannion's in Clifden, Hamilton's in Leenane, and Paddy Coyne's in Tullycross, all of which were not only pubs but general merchants and undertakers. Mannion's traded under the slogan "For All Your Needs, from Maternity to Eternity". So, Hamilton's went one better: "For All Your Needs, from Womb to Tomb". Paddy Coyne and Sons thought hard, and eventually settled on their own slogan. "Paddy Coyne's - For All You Wish For, from Erection to Resurrection."
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that there's storytelling going on here.
Drama in the Garden is on every Wednesday at 8.15pm until the end of August. Tegolin Knowland performs plays for children in the Teach Ceoil in Renvyle at 7pm every Thursday.
Ben Murnane is the author of Two in a Million: A True Story About Illness and Love, to be published this September by A & A Farmar