International buzz surrounds a Waterford production of Russell Hoban's weird masterpiece Riddley Walker, writes Brian O'Connell
Russell Hoban is not joking when he says early on in our interview: "Death will be a good career move for me." Throughout his career, Hoban has straddled a fine line between mainstream and cult status, not quite fully pitching his tent in either camp.
For his legion of worldwide fans and critical supporters, he is quite simply one of the most imaginative and important fictional voices of the last half-century. Having started out primarily as a freelance illustrator for titles such as Sports Illustrated and Newsweek, Hoban began his writing career with a genre that would stand him in good financial health in later years - children's literature. His first publication, The Mouse, (began in 1963) made the crossover to the adult audience, and is now regarded as a classic.
Although, at the time, as Hoban has stated previously, "it got a two-inch review in the New York Times from someone who said it was crap".
Shortly after, Hoban moved to London, and it was there, in 1974, that he began what many consider to be his masterpiece - Riddley Walker, a sort of thinking person's Mad Max. The book would take five years to complete, as much down to the mental demands of the world he was creating as it was to the physical research Hoban put into his writing.
"My life and my career can be divided in two really," Hoban says, "before and after Riddley Walker. In terms of how the seed for the book was sown it was very simple. On March 14th, 1974, I visited Canterbury Cathedral for the first time and saw Dr EW Tristram's reconstruction of the 15th-century wall painting The Legend of Saint Eustace. Suddenly this idea came to me of marrying a post-nuclear civilisation to the story of St Eustace. It was what I refer to as the elephant of surprise, when I put the two worlds together. All I had to do then was work for 5½ years to get the thing down on paper."
The book was hailed in many quarters as a masterpiece, not least in the New York Times, who gave it a glowing full front-page review. Anthony Burgess claimed that "this is what literature is meant to be - exploration without fear", while the New York Review of Books called it an "artistic tour-de-force in every possible way". Set in an ambiguous post-apocalyptic age, Hoban invented his own language - a sort of Joycean re-reading of A Clockwork Orange - to relay the story of 12-year-old Riddley Walker, who sets out on the mother of all quest missions.
"It was a hard slog," says Hoban. "I got up with it and went to bed with it every night for years. I had an old Bedford camper van at the time and my wife and kids spent long periods travelling all over Kent researching the locations in the novel. When it came out, the book was really well received critically, but materially I never made much money from it or many of my adult books. To be frank, the only way I could afford to keep writing for many years was through my income from children's novels."
Many of those children's novels have become classics, in particular his Frances the badger series. Now 82, Hoban remains a prolific writer, with a new publication, My Tangle With Barbara Strozzi, out now. While recent ill health has threatened to put a halt to his output, he is hoping he can recover sufficiently to continue his literary journey for several years to come. "I am addicted to writing - when I stop writing I feel physically ill," he says. "The problem with the way I write is that my novels depend on careful research of each location. In the past I would go out with a camera and a little tape recorder and take notes. Now my infirmities prevent me from doing this and all I'm doing at the moment is trying to build myself up again so I can write another novel. It has hindered my writing, because when I write I never have a plan. I just start from whatever gets me started, and from that point on the characters and action develop organically."
WHEN PRESSED ON why he believes his work isn't more widely read or better-known, Hoban says that he "realised pretty early on, that only like-minded people would buy my books. These are people who are in tune with the way I think and respond to life. What type of people are they you might ask? Well, frankly, quite weird!"
One of those like-minded souls was Ben Hennessy, artistic director of Red Kettle Theatre Company in Waterford, who was given a copy of Riddley Walker sometime in the mid-1980s. After Hennessy had consumed the novel, it did the rounds of "like-minded" souls in the Waterford arts scene and became something of a cult classic in the Déise capital. When Hennessy came to write for children in later years, he found in Hoban a kindred spirit - someone who wasn't afraid to speak in complex tongues to children and adults alike.
In 1986, the Royal Exchange in Manchester produced a stage version of Riddley Walker, adapted by Hoban himself. Hennessy, hearing about the adaptation, wrote to the Royal Exchange in 1991, and following this Hoban sent him a script. Almost immediately, Hennessey recognised it had the potential to be a compulsively challenging production, and he set his sights on producing the play. Next week, he finally realises that ambition, a full 16 years since he received the script and two decades after Riddley Walker made its way into his subconscious.
"I don't think I was ready as a director back then," says Hennessy of the long gestation period. "No one else seemed as captivated as I was. But I've been influenced by it ever since. I've written loads of plays for children where I've invented languages, had puppets and put the imaginary next to the everyday. In other words I think I've designed versions of this set at least a dozen times over the years. I'm ready for it now though."
When we speak, Hennessy is in the middle of a 100ft red and yellow big top, pitched on the grounds of the Woodlands Hotel on the outskirts of Waterford city. Midway through our interview, a local pops his head around the corner and asks when the circus is on. Hennessy politely tells him it's a play, and that it opens next week, and continues plotting the lighting design.
The undertaking is Red Kettle's most ambitious, involving a cast of 35, a costly and logistically difficult production and a complex and demanding script. Not only that, but they have eschewed traditional theatre spaces in an attempt to reinforce the sense of imaginative departure.
"The Royal Exchange production was in the round with very little set," says Hennessey. "I was sure it would be great in a non-theatre space and we checked loads of places, including the Old Foundry, for example, but we couldn't get somewhere audience-friendly. A circus tent came to Tramore and it occurred to me it would be an ideal setting. I'm interested in a kind of theatre that is hugely visual and stimulates you once you enter, and you certainly get that with the big top."
IN THE YEARS ahead, Hennessy hopes to be able to do more spectacular large-scale work and is already thinking of using the big top again next year. For now though, Riddley Walker could well be the production that re-establishes the company's national profile, with Red Kettle having floundered somewhat in the past few years.
"I suppose it is a dream come true for us to be doing this. I'm after saying to a few people: Dreams really do come true you know!" says Hennessy, tongue firmly in cheek. "When we eventually put this production in our programme in 2000, we couldn't afford it and it took a while to persuade people that it was right for us."
Already, Hoban fanatics are planning on travelling to Waterford from all over the world. An online forum for Hoban enthusiasts, called the Kraken, has been buzzing with updates on the production for the past few weeks.
So much so, in fact, that a coach is being organised from London to transport fans to the show, with some flying from Switzerland to catch the bus. E-mails have arrived from San Francisco from one person who is trying to persuade his girlfriend to make the trip, while a couple in Australia got in touch to apologise for not being able to make it. Just the other day, Eli Bishop, who wrote the annotations to the novel, rang to say she hopes to arrive from the US for the last night.
"It's just a buzz," says Hennessey. "Some days we finish rehearsing at 6pm and the actors will stay until 10pm to help with the set or the props - that's very rare in my experience. We were in here rehearsing all day last Saturday and I was saying to the cast and crew, 'where in the world would you rather be at that moment?' All of us agreed it was in the big top, doing exactly what we were doing."
Riddley Walker is at the Big Top, Woodlands Hotel, Dunmore Road, Waterford, Nov 10-17. Book tickets on 051-855038, www.garterlane.ie
