Margaret Thatcher - oh good God...

Oh dear... I don't normally go in for the political stuff - but I'm not sure my point of view about what's going on in Britain right now is actually political. I mean, I don't have any faith that Labour, the "Liberals" ( God help us ), or even Plaid Cymru are going to save us, so I'm not asking for the vote for anyone, or even civil disobedience.

I've been away from "Britain" (inverted commas, not sure how far the concept exists outside the Olympics ) for almost twenty years - apparently Mr. Blobby's not so big any more. But it seems like an increasingly surreal place. In case anyone's not heard, on Wednesday there will be a state funeral ( to all intents and purposes ) for a much-loved Prime Minister, rolling through London with military guard to St. Paul's cathedral the first since Winston Churchill to receive this honour. With a level of security to match the London Olympics. Not because of Al Quaeda etc., who probably haven't heard of the lady. They need that level of policing to stop protesters from interfering with this national heroine's honours.

Now, I'm one of the few people you might find who thinks that this woman was neither a saint nor the Wicked Witch of the West. I'm old enough to remember, from a child's point of view, Britain in the 1970s : strikes, power cuts, inflation; some of what Margaret Thatcher did to begin with looks sensible to me : get the unions back under control, privatise industries which have no need to be state monopolies ( telephones etc.), even the Falklands ( described memorably by Jorge Luís Borges as "dos hombres calvos peleando por un peine", two bald men fighting over a comb ) if you accept, perhaps charitably, that the motive was to protect British citizens from a nasty right-wing dictatorship.

But legacy... when a lot of her fans talk about her legacy, how she made Britain great again, they're using words in ways that I don't understand. Now, as I've been known to tell my students, History is always about the present, and the debate about any political figure is always a conversation about the here and now. Can these people really be saying that where we are now is a good place ?

Two aspects of this legacy I think are particularly sad. It may be that these were unintended. The conversion of the UK economy from an industrial base to an economy centered on services, tourism, financial services has increasingly made it a London-centered country ( and London is more or less now an independent enclave within the U.K., gradually being sold off to Russians, Qataris, etc. ). The Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are a consequence of the way the Conservative Party has become an exclusively English affair, provoked in turn by the way those countries were handled in the 1980s. If Scotland goes in 2014 - and I would bet that the "Thatcher Dividend" some newspapers are talking about is more likely to go to the SNP than the Tories, as people get to watch on Wednesday what their taxes are spent on - then Wales will go within a decade, unthinkable even 10 years ago. And that will be Britain gone.

The other ? The dangerous little idea that imposing your views on the 50 % of the population who disagree with you is somehow admirable. In fact, that was always part of the Thatcher myth more than reality; but it's been taken up by a whole raft of idiot politicians who think that if they defend a point of view which is truly offensive to a large proportion of their population, then this PROVES that they are right.

There isn't a statue of Margaret Thatcher in London : even a bust made for the House of Commons got destroyed as an act of protest some years back, I think.I hope things are respectful on Wednesday; I'm glad I'm not paying for it, although I'm annoyed my sister, an NHS nurse, has to ( and I haven't even started on how her governments set in progress the movements which put ever greater pressure on teachers, doctors, nurses, etc., while letting bankers regulate themselves ). It would be nice to think the media attention might one day be lavished on someone who brought people together, rather than divided them.

Dermot Bolger

If  you saw The Parting Glass, and you're one of the folks who were deeply moved by what you saw and heard in the Centro Gallego, then the best place to start to find out more is undoubtedly his website : http://www.dermotbolger.com/

Dermot wrote this wonderful play which moves from realism so bare and taut that it brings tears to the eyes, through the deep poetry of life and into stand-up comedy. Apart from that, he got in touch with us when he found out we were doing his play, which meant a lot.

"Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages.
Thou on earth thy time hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and lasses must,
Like chimneysweepers, come to dust."

I've written that from memory, so there may be a mistake or two in there : it's the song from Cymbeline. I remember one of our supervisors on the Shakespeare paper at uni, who managed to scare the shit out of  Paul Weeks and myself with sheer colossal erudition, when we got to the last scene of the Winter's Tale, he just got us to read it aloud. Good man; there's poetry / poetic theatre whose magic runs so deep that you just have to let the words work their spell. And Delyth's playing captures this.

The rest of the CD is as good, particularly if you like Under Milk Wood.

"Llais" ( "Voice" in English ) is on Steam Pie Records.

Delyth Jenkins : Fear no more the heat of the sun

On a totally different note, I've been getting into harp music recently, Sofi bought me a nice Robin Huw Bowen CD for Christmas. To keep me calm in the run-up to the play, I've also been listening a lot to the wonderful harp playing of Delyth Jenkins, from Swansea, who often writes for the theatre : here's a link to a piece she wrote for Cymbeline, played in a tent : I don't see how it can have been posted on Youtube without her permission, so I guess it's o.k. to share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe2tBaRGq8g

The Parting Glass : parting thoughts.

Well, that was interesting.

The Parting Glass - the play by Dermot Bolger I directed for Madrid Players, was, I think, a pretty fierce success. Certainly, a number of people spoke to me afterwards and told me how it felt like we'd put up a few pieces of their life on the stage, and situation after situation in the play touched them deeply. It's not the only kind of theatre, but it's the kind of theatre I like.

We also, I think, achieved what I was hoping for on Friday evening. We had a relatively small audience, some 45 people in all, and it was clear from the opening lines they were with us - John McClafferty's opening monologue got laughs in places I hadn't suspected. Now, the difference between laughter and tears as a physiological response isn't so great, and so all the laughter was setting up the bite of the play later on ( apart from, of course, the obvious fact that it's nice to make people laugh, and as an actor it always gives you confidence ).

And from there the energy just built, and I think we got what you hope for, but don't often get in a theatre : audience and actors so involved emotionally with the story unfolding that it creates a little community in there, and the energy coming from the audience feeds into the actors' performances.

Saturday wasn't quite the same : a bigger audience, a bit slower, I could see this rattled the actors a little early on. It was still technically a very strong show, but we didn't have that little bit of magic we'd had the night before.

I've no doubt I'll happily continue babbling later in the week.

In the meantime, I'm starting to develop a case of the DTs. More about that anon...

Not finished, just abandoned.

Storming final rehearsal last night...and tomorrow we open. And now, all the last-minute doubts and questions that I guess every director must have.

Will anybody come ? If they come, will anybody understand it ?  Is that bit too fast ? Is that bit too slow ?  Is the bit I think is really funny, like, really funny, or have I got a crap sense of humour ?  Have we got enough inflatable plastic hammers and leprechaun hats ?

Of course, no play is ever really finished...they just get to the point where you either abandon them, or go on and on and on as weeks turn into months turn into years obsessively tweaking the telephone answering machine message on page 20 or the handshake on page 42 while the actors quietly sneak off to get on with their lives. So it's good the day is finally here.

I found the final run last night powerful and moving, and I've now read/heard this play 743 times. It's been a real pleasure to work with John, James, Eimear, Jackie and Javier, and watch Dermot's mighty text evolve into...well, whatever it evolves into tomorrow night. Because that's the last link between football and theatre : anyone can talk a good game, but can you do it on the pitch ?

Final words from that great man of the theatre, Vicente del Bosque :

" Es un obviedad : el entrenador tiene su papel, proporciona herramientas, pero los autores de todo son los jugadores."

( It's a statement of the obvious : the coach has his role to play, he supplies the tools, but it's the players who make it all happen. )

Off to watch Atletí : )

Four days to go !

Four days to go... here's a few photos from last night's rehearsal.  We're still waiting for a few scarves, inflatable hammers, etc.... but it gives a flavour.

"It was all train stations once : my scenes of homecomings, reunions, destinations reached."

                                       
                                               "A surprising amount of ash for a little feller."

                          "It takes balls of steel to drive a Titleist ProV1 so far out of bounds."

                                   " Ireland in a playoff ? Trust me, it will be a fecking wake."

                            "Amid an onslaught of green jerseys and hats and plastic hammers,
                                              we board a metro for the Stade de France."

                                         " We may be broken-hearted in 90 minutes' time,
                  but what's the point in being alive if you're afraid to have your heart broken ?"

                                    "There's no barriers here now, no millionaires on that pitch,
                                             just 11 Irishmen sharing the same dream as us."

                    "I remember him doing those same dance steps with my sister in Zhivago's"

                                                                   The dressing room.