I've put this off long enough. Since June 7th last I've counted to 10 at least 2.3 million times, hummed all the hymns from Faith of Our Fathers (132 times), all the songs of Van Morrison (Madame George 1,051 times), danced The Walls of Limerick (53 times), 243 jigs and 23 hornpipes (they're too hard!), waltzed The Blue Danube as far as the Black Sea, and chewed the tops of 281 biros. I can't take it any more. Besides, it has made no difference.
I am so proud of Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen winning those Tonys in New York that I still remain just as likely to make a complete fool of myself now writing about them. As for Anna Manahan and Tom Murphy, I salute them both with great pleasure. But Garry, Marie, and I go back a long way.
There is also a certain resentment involved. I too should have been given a Tony. It all goes back to that October in the early 1970s when we three had just arrived at UCG, joined the Drama Society and met for the first time.
First play
I decided to direct Everyman, a medieval morality play and probably the most boring piece of theatre ever written. It lasts 20 minutes and has a cast of 17. Triona Glacken, now teaching in Dublin, was co-director. Garry chose Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass Maguire for her first venture as a director. The roles in Everyman were not exactly fought over, so we begged friends and the barely-known to audition. I met Marie and cajoled her to come along. All I knew about her was that she was from Co Sligo. She auditioned and I decided she was not good enough for any of the 17 roles. She went next door where Garry was auditioning for Cass Maguire. Garry cast her as Cass. Neither has looked back since. It's all I've done.
Years later, when people asked me what credentials I had to be a theatre critic (at the Irish Press from 1991 to 1996), I would tell them that story. They then generally agreed I had the necessary qualifications. The decision not to cast Marie in Everyman is why I believe I too should have received a Tony on June 7th. Where would world theatre be today if I had cast her as Prudence, Knowledge, even Fortitude? And who would have become the first woman director to win a Tony? The women's movement owes me too!
UCG. Such heady days. How we fought! Truly those people who referred to us as "the Dramatic Society" made up in accuracy for what they lacked in grammar. In our second year, all we did was drama, however you read that sentence. Most dramatic of all were our committee meetings. Garry was auditor. Marie and I were on the committee along with people such as Jamesy Ryan and Berna McGuickan. Jamesy was caught up in German Expressionism, so effectively that when the set fell during one of his productions of an awful August Stramm piece everyone thought it was part of the act. And Berna was a self-styled French-maid-with-a-lisp in The Bald Prima Donna, a theatre of the absurd piece by Eugene Ionesco.
"At it again"
She was also secretary. Glancing at her minute book during the year I saw that she had summarised an entire meeting with the single line: "Garry and Patsy were at it again."
But in that year our small group staged five full-length and eight one-act plays. We developed a greatly under-used venue into a real little theatre. We decided all student plays would be staged there. We set up a standards sub-committee to view every production two weeks before it opened to see whether or not it should go ahead. Then Garry and I had the mother-of-all bust-ups.
She was directing Tiny Alice, by the American playwright Edward Albee, with Marie in the lead. It was a big play. Garry felt the stage in our little theatre was too small. It was. She wanted to put Tiny Alice on at the "Jes Hall", a fine venue with lots of room. She also refused to go before the standards sub-committee.
I saw red . . . violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange . . . and red! I went through the gamut of emotions from A to Z. I wanted her head, her body in traction, her finger nails pulled out with tweezers. One by one. Slowly. I wanted to hurt her so, so badly. And poor Marie was caught in the middle, again. To make things worse, Marie and I were then sharing the first mixed (gender) house in Galway.
Drastic action was called for. I wrote a tersely-worded resignation letter, all my darling principles on show, and pinned it to the Drama Society noticeboard. Then I waited for the heavens to fall.
Outside the action
But nothing happened. People told me I was "a great fellow", and assured me I was "absolutely right". Then they disappeared. But I didn't want praise. All I wanted was Garry's head. Her execution, in any form. Even murder. Then I realised I was outside the action. Garry went on to stage a triumphant Tiny Alice, with Marie giving a stunning performance before large, admiring crowds. I never liked that play.
I learned two valuable lessons from the experience: to resign is stupid and those who proclaim principle are suspect. I abandoned ship and went off to play either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern (I cannot remember which) in a space-age production of Hamlet with Gertrude and Claudius looking like refugees from Star Trek.
In a very short while Garry, Marie and myself were buddies again. We continued to study together, to socialise together, and to philosophise together. Garry introduced me to Van Morrison's music, Dylan Thomas's poetry, New York, and Chinese food in a restaurant on Broadway. Marie was central in organising my 21stbirthday celebrations, and a constant consolation in helping me through the treacheries of young life. Later she would do me the honour of marrying Sean McGinley, with whom I once shared a semi-derelict house in Galway. (It was near a graveyard and we called it "The Crypt". The area we dubbed "Ard na Reilge" - Graveyard Heights).
So, maybe now you understand my pride and pleasure after this year's Tony awards. And why I no longer really care whether I make a fool of myself, even when sober. But I won't be sober for long the next time I meet Garry and Marie.