Disenchanted? Surely not, as Enniskerry gets a magical Disney makeover

TIM O’BRIEN

The village of Enniskerry in Co Wicklow was en fete on Sunday afternoon with locals, tourists and film crew all mingling among flower-festooned buildings and pubs serving food in the open air.

The normally flowery-but-sedate village seemed to lose all sense of sedateness and go all-out-twee, as plastic garlands of wisteria flowers almost smothered real-life wisteria-clad houses facing the town’s iconic clock tower.

The clock tower itself, built by the 6th Viscount Powerscourt to commemorate the centenary of the 1743 creation of the first viscount, is already an ornate affair, built on a shamrock-shaped base. But for Disney which is filming Disenchanted, it was not enough. The clock tower was clothed in artificial shrubbery, more purple wisteria, bunting and its flower beds brimming with multi-coloured, plastic, daisies.

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Facing it all across the square was a grand imperial building where, last week, no grand imperial building had been. Visitors posed for photographs in front of the granite-looking steps of this, the fictional setting’s imposing Town Hall. Only the blue line around the roof gave the game away.

Yellow roses were trailed through the iron railings of homes on the streets approaching the clock tower, while The Reluctant Dragon Tavern, a Tudor-looking structure, leaned perilously into the – suddenly cobbled – roadway. A small sign to one side announced: “Enniskerry Inn, business as usual”.

Ever more garlands

Indeed, with tables set out on the road in the sunshine and visitors eating and drinking as workers added ever more garlands seemingly to any structure that stood still, it was hard to know what was real and what had changed.

The local chemist was there, renamed The Village Cauldron, Potions, Notions and Lotions. Next door was Prince Ali’s Magic Carpet Shoppe, while across the road was Beauty and the Book. A house had been renamed “Ratatoothie”, and declared it was a dentist’s practice.

All afternoon, visitors and locals alike trailed through the centre of the village, cameras aloft or staring from cars as gardaí from the Roads Policing Unit tried to keep things moving.

Disney did not respond to requests for commentary on what was happening over several days. A local retailer said she could not say anything because “Disney have told us not to”.

“I can say Enniskerry will be closed next week from Monday, but I can’t say anything more than that – I don’t know anything more then that anyway,” she said. Two further businesses in the village declined the opportunity to comment.

Disenchanted is a sequel to the Disney movie Enchanted, featuring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey as princess Giselle and divorce lawyer Robert Phillip. It follows on from Enchanted, which ended with the baddies destroyed, Giselle (Adams) married to Robert, and running a fashion business. But what happens then is seemingly the tightly guarded secret.

The village will be closed from June 14th to 18th, from 7am to 10pm, with other dates in July, and even “night shoots” towards the end of next month.

At another location, Erskine Avenue, in Greystones, a modest Arts and Crafts Edwardian home has also been given the Disney treatment, complete with turrets and masses of blossoms, and of course onlookers and a closed road. A local told The Irish Times “it was fun at first, but now I’m browned off”.