New Yorkers loved Des Keogh's portrayal of a lonely bachelor farmer, writes Arminta Wallace
When a New York Times reviewer describes a one-man show as "singular theatre . . . a fiercely serious and bruisingly hilarious suicide note", people tend to sit up and pay attention. And in Ireland we should perhaps be paying more attention than most, because the show in question is a John B. Keane adaptation and the actor at the centre of it is one Des Keogh - regarded on this side of the Atlantic as more of a soft-centred "him off the telly" entertainer of the popular kind. When Keogh opened The Love-Hungry Farmer in a tiny studio space at the Irish Repertory Theater in New York last January, however, the NYT critic wasn't the only one to be impressed. The show sold out, and subsequently moved to the main stage, after a hatful of positive reviews praised Keogh's "razor-sharp definition" and storytelling skills. "The actor," declared the Associated Press, "is a wonder." Back at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, where the show begins a week-long run next Tuesday before touring the country in the New Year, Keogh looks out at the choppy sea and smiles his crumpled smile.
"In New York," he says, "they take you as they find you. And I've done a good bit of work there." The latter includes several O'Casey roles as well as Dancing at Lughnasa, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Bernard Farrell's Forty-Four Sycamore. But for the moment Keogh is happy to agree with the American critics that he and John B's cranky bachelor, John Bosco McLane, are a marriage made in heaven.
"The funny thing is, that I was only ever in one John B. Keane play in my entire life - and I'm 40 years in the business this year," he says. "That was a tiny role, when a company I knew came up from Cork and one person couldn't travel, so they rang me the night before and asked me if I'd play the part."
Then along came Phyllis Ryan and Michael Scott with their 2001 production of The Matchmaker, in which Keogh was invited to play alongside Anna Manahan. "I wasn't even sure if I could do it, to begin with," he says. "But I was thrilled at the way it went - we played all over the place, from the Edinburgh Festival to New York - and it encouraged me to launch myself into this piece." Keogh had actually approached John B. Keane for permission to adapt Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer about five years ago. "When I read it I realised there was great material in it for a one-man show," he says. "I loved the character of John Bosco McLane, a bachelor whose big ambition in life is to get himself a wife, or at least a woman - at all costs. But from a theatrical point of view, first you have to decide what's going to work on stage, then you have to decide what to leave out. Sadly, I had to leave out a lot." He ended up with half a dozen characters including the eponymous matchmaker from the previous outing, Dicky Mick Dicky O'Connor, a bookie by the name of Sylvester Brady, and a streetwise priest blessed with a parish full of people who turn up at confession with religious regularity - with nothing to confess.
Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer has already made it to the stage as The Chastitute, but Keogh insists his adaptation is "vastly" different. "I was very keen to keep the richness - the poetry - of John B's language intact. This is the man telling his own life story. I don't think a play, with the different demands and pacing of dialogue, can achieve the same effect. I was very anxious that this man should not be simply a ridiculous figure. Now obviously some of the situations he gets himself into are very funny, and there are great laughs in the show, but I wanted to maintain his dignity. Some of it is very sad. And even while the people are laughing, it's sort of a double thing: they feel sorry for him, but they can't help laughing at the same time."
As the reaction of urban audiences in New York confirms, loneliness and sexual desperation are universal themes, and the emotional turmoil they engender is certainly not restricted to elderly gentleman farmers in the hills of Co Kerry. Is it possible that in Ireland, we tended to take John B. Keane's inimitable humour - poised between the sublime and the ridiculous - for granted, at least until his death last year? Recent productions of Sive and Sharon's Grave have won new levels of critical acclaim - is there something of a reassessment going on?
"I think there is a reassessment of John B. Keane, and I'm very happy that people are taking his works more seriously," says Keogh. "They've always been very popular, but they haven't always been treated very well critically. I also think they haven't got the reputation outside the country that they should have; in America, for example, most people only know The Field, and that's because of the film. Not many of his plays have travelled - and there's no reason why they shouldn't." Keogh, meanwhile, will be travelling around Ireland with The Love-Hungry Farmer, which begins a nationwide tour in St John's, Listowel on January 5th. And after that? "We'll see how it goes," is all he'll say - a reply worthy of John Bosco himself.
Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer starts on Tuesday in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, at 8 p.m. Tel: 01-2312929