RadioReview: Somewhere just beneath the surface of the prickly "ding-dong" between Fintan O'Toole and Hugh Leonard (Liveline, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) were the seeds of an interesting debate on the role of the theatre critic. Both were on to discuss O'Toole's review in this paper of Bernard Farrell's new play, Many Happy Returns.
A listener had called in complaining about its negativity, and Leonard went further by saying that the review "blasted the play out of existence". In his defence, O'Toole said it was "a very bad play, based on a kind of humour that was dated and problematic". One character got her laughs by "showing her knickers and bending over . . . Carry On humour from 40 years ago". Listeners were fast getting the picture and a rather vivid one at that.
Leonard, in his role as friend of the playwright, said that Farrell hadn't read the review and probably wouldn't bother, but that didn't stop him being deeply irked on his behalf anyway. Just how difficult a critic's lot is, and how small town our supposedly cosmopolitan city really is, was hinted at with his remark that "Bernard Farrell feels that Fintan O'Toole has it in for him". Not so, said the critic, who expressed admiration for the playwright and who reminded Leonard that in his time he had penned some pretty vitriolic reviews himself. Ah yes, said Leonard, but that was English playwrights in English publications, not one of our own. O'Toole pointed out that to review an Irish author any differently from anyone else would be patronising. It doesn't matter to him what other reviewers say or if, as is happening at the Farrell play, the audience are laughing like drains; he is paid to give his own opinion. Joe Duffy let the pair of them at it.
"I don't think that Fintan O'Toole's forte is comedy," said Leonard. O'Toole tried, and protested his humorousness - maybe a bit too much. It made for grand radio theatre, and it's been a while since there's been such a lively debate about any stage play. Incidentally, the play also received negative reviews on Artszone (Lyric fm, Saturday) and on Rattlebag (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday).
Top performance of the week goes to the AIB's Michael Buckley, who was an airwaves fixture on Tuesday; the bank was caught overcharging customers to the tune of millions, yet Buckley managed to conduct several interviews without using that nasty "overcharge" word. On The Last Word (Today FM), Matt Cooper, whose voice shoots up an octave when interviewees don't say what he expects them to, tried to encourage Buckley to sound even a teeny bit ashamed. When he got an insufficient mea culpa from "is your bank humiliated?", Cooper went straight for "would you concede that you stole from your customers?" No, said the man whose corporate suit is surely made of Grade A Teflon, getting the last word in with a dose of "it'll never happen again" corporate PR spiel.
The slick coining-it world of banking is a galaxy away from the everyday world of the Lough Swilly Bus, a service which for 70 years has trundled along between Malin Head and Derry and several remote places in between. A cross-border service, it has been intimately involved in the social and political life of the North West and it was the subject of a fascinating documentary by Ian Lee (Documentary on One, RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday).
It's an unfashionable sort of service. It goes on a time-consuming route, stopping at remote, lonely places. The driver knows everyone, passengers chat to each other and, while it's vital to alleviate social isolation, it makes no economic sense. It's now so desperately in need of an injection of finance that the ancient buses sound as though they are held together by good wishes and an oily rag.
One man who worked as a Swilly conductor in the 1950s remembers 25 to 30 buses, each with 50 passengers, dropping off at the ports every spring as seasonal economic migration took men from Donegal to Scotland to look for work. The men would return in October. In the 1970s, when the Troubles were at their bitter height, the buses could go into no-go areas such as the Bogside to evacuate women and children out to places such as Letterkenny. The bus depots were bombed and the schedules - "if you'll forgive the pun," said a driver at the time - "were shot to pieces". At army checkpoints Swilly buses leaving and arriving into Derry would be emptied out and passengers lined up against the side to be searched. "It became the norm," said the driver.
In a week when the talk was about photographs being the only evidence, the mind's eye image of ordinary, everyday bus passengers lined up in the rain to be searched at gunpoint, created an emotive picture the best digital camera couldn't replicate.
