Cónal Creedon's Patsy is a blind dog, not a guide dog. But in a way she has led Creedon into the olfactory theme of his new play to be presented at the Half Moon Theatre as part of his Second City Trilogy.
The Cure is a solitary ramble around Cork: led by the nose, as it were, its protagonist seeks early-morning relief in pubs and invokes a grandfather who was able to find the way home through the local streets simply by smell - the brewery, the butcher, the fish at the Baltimore Stores, apple tarts at Noreen's shop and the singe of toffee wafted from the Coal Quay.
The first in a sequence funded by a bursary from Cork 2005 with the production costs met by Cork Opera House, the play is directed by Geoff Gould (of Blood in the Alley) with Mikel Murfi as the entire cast.
"I'm mad about it," Creedon confesses, adding that the awareness of scent as the path-finder comes from Patsy, whose beautiful opalescent eyes have been useless to her since birth. She is a street-wise city-centre bitch; Creedon lives, with his partner Fiona O'Toole, more or less behind the family shop once famous as the Inchigeelagh Dairies at the junction of Devonshire Street, Coburg Street and Leitrim Street.
"The idea in The Cure is that although the character is sighted it's as if he has been walking around with his eyes closed, not able to see, or foresee, events which seem to have been inevitable."
The distance of generations separates a trinity of crises: the burning of Cork, the closure of the Ford and Dunlop factories and the explosive arrival of the Celtic tiger. Socio-economic realism doesn't seem to fit readily into Creedon's perceived persona of amiable subversion, but it is the rootstock of his creativity. The nameboard of the Inchigeelagh Dairies refers to the family connections with west Cork, but life at the core of the city has produced an urban focus brought frantically to life with the local radio serial Under the Goldie Fish, more shampoo than soap-opera and the first rallying of Creedon aficionados.
The trilogy is as much about a city on the brink of transformation as about the relationships between fathers and sons. Soon the triangle of shops and pubs and offices in which Creedon lives will be no more than a diminishing memory. His topographical loyalty preserves landmarks now vanishing in ramparts of new buildings: "It's like a bardic thing, reciting the lineage of a small city, remembering the names, even the kind of bread they sold in the different local shops".
Identifying the trendy new Boqueria as Crowley's bar, he believes that while nostalgia can be bad it can be futuristic too. Even in The Cure what he calls the "road to Damascus" element carries a suggestion that the crisis is within. In his forthcoming play After Luke - as in a version after the gospel of St Luke - the prodigal son has to deal with the morality of the property market, while When I Was God examines sporting rivalries expressed in family expectations. These two plays will be produced later in the year, and for the moment Creedon, novelist as well as playwright and script-writer, is concentrating on rehearsals of The Cure and on his scripts for the BBC. He loves the work he does and believes life is good: "This is just great fun! And paying the bills - that's success!"
The Cure opens at the Half Moon Theatre on March 29th, with previews from March 23rd
