Brian Cowen may have to travel the 'rubber chicken' circuit at home, but it was all canapes in the Big Apple
IT IS the fate of senior Irish politicians to travel the "rubber chicken" circuit back home, meeting party activists and supporters. But for Brian Cowen in the Big Apple yesterday it was strictly canapes and celebrities.
We all know that the Taoiseach is rather more interested in the sport than the arts, but even he must have been impressed by the presence of Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Stephen Rea, Barry McGovern, dancers Jean Butler and Colin Dunne and, last but not least, the legendary Milo O'Shea.
The Abbey and the Gate theatres have migrated from the Liffeyside with some assistance from the worthy official body known as Culture Ireland to stage productions in New York. It is believed to be the first time these two giants of the Irish stage have simultaneously performed in Manhattan.
There has long been a friendly rivalry between the two theatres back home but let it be recorded that the Abbey's Fiach Mac Conghail and the Gate's Michael Colgan shook hands warmly under the approving gaze of the Taoiseach: another peace process successfully concluded.
New York temperatures are in the 90s Fahrenheit but Liam Neeson was beating the weather in a white suit. He quipped that Michael Colgan, whom he first met in 1978, had always "threatened" to do something with him and he was very happy to be performing in a series of Beckett monologues with Barry McGovern and Ralph Fiennes.
Michael Colgan was clearly enjoying his theatrical coup in getting three such prominent actors to take part in the Beckett productions and he is also delighted to be staging a series of readings in poetry and prose by the three stars, along with Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City (there's no getting away from SATC these days).
Barry McGovern recalled that it was exactly 20 years since he last performed I'll Go On in New York and here he was again doing the same show. Beckett would have appreciated the coincidence. Stephen Rea is no stranger to the New York stage either, having performed in Frank McGuinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, which ran for six months.
Milo O'Shea said he had now retired from the stage, giving him an opportunity to admire the work of others. There was a special round of applause for him from those assembled.
Since he took over as Taoiseach, Brian Cowen has been starting off every speech with several paragraphs and sometimes more in Irish, Fiach Mac Conghail expressed his appreciation as an Irish-speaker for the Taoiseach's devotion to the language. The Abbey is in New York staging its production of American writer Sam Shepherd's Kicking a Dead Horse.
Mr Cowen was uncharacteristically diffident in such company, but expressed his regret that he would be travelling home before he had an opportunity to see the various productions. At the end, he posed for photographs in the summer sunshine with the stars. Soon he will be back in Ireland, travelling the rubber chicken circuit eternally. Beckett would have appreciated that too.
