Severe Jam Damage

No, not the dude from the bible.
Instead something much more frightening. That’s right kids - FREAKIN’ CLOWNS!
I ended up in the NCH last Friday night with Miz D and The Philosopher to see a comic production - er, I don’t even know if that is the correct word but it’ll do for now.
It had clowns (scary ass ugly clowns) and a choir.
Not really my bag if ya get me. The choir was really good, but I just can’t get over the damn clowns.
The conceit of the piece was that the clowns (Jesus I’m even getting the shivers typing the word) were the cleaning staff who ‘hilariously’ got caught on the stage just before the performance and - unable to leave - then became part of the performance.
I’d have preferred just to listen to the choir who were quite good and had some fabulous soloists. Instead every so often the clowns would come in and muck everything up, throwing popcorn and water on the audience.
Ahh the old reliables. Hil-freakin’-arious.
You’ll be happy to hear it was only a two night run at the NCH - so any readers who suffer from coulrophobia can now walk down Earlsfort Terrace in safety.

Oh yeah, the photo there? That was a song that they made us STAND UP AND SING ALONG. Complete with ‘wacky’ actions.

I’m a broken woman.

Olympia Theatre
Written and Performed by Aidan Dooley

It’s been a while since I was at the theatre for anything, and going to a one man show I was a bit apprehensive. How in the hell was one bloke going to keep a sold out theatre interested for 2 hours? Turns out, very easily. Aidan Dooley is a natural storyteller and after a brief explanation of where and what the Antarctic is (at the bottom, a large land mass, no-one lives there - Jade Goody take note) we got into the meat and bones of it. Tom Crean’s life from when he joined the British Navy, his expeditions on the Discovery, the Terra Nova and the Endurance and finally his pub in Annascaul.
More of a history lesson than a play, but interesting nonethless. Dooley engaged the audience - adults and children alike - in one sweet scene he explained the danger of deep crevices by leaning over the edge of the stage and shouting ‘helllooooo’ into the ground. Somewhere in the upper circle a small child shouted ‘hellllooooo!’ back at him which prompted the off-the-cuff ‘There’s my echo’.
Dooley is not a classic actor but he is a fantastic storyteller, bringing Crean back to life, sharing with us the disappointment at not being chosen for the final trek to the pole, the joy of hearing the breakfast bells ring in South Georgia, and the grief at finding Scott and three of the final party frozen in a tent a mere 11 miles from help.
If the show comes anywhere near you I would recommend it, as would the sold out audience last Saturday who gave the show a rousing standing ovation.

The plan was to meet in the Harbourmaster in the IFSC. On a Thursday night. I can hear you laughing already. I was the first there and it took me twenty minutes to order a heineken. Twenty minutes of standing at the bar and trying to catch ANY of the six staff working there. They were so intent on getting the orders out for the people eating food that they ignored the people in the bar. The harbourmaster is a bit of a shithole. And not what I think of as those good types of shitholes. The old man style pubs like keogh’s or neary’s where you can go and have a nice pint and where the barstaff can handle serving more than one person at a time. Harbourmaster is full of officious suits and ten grand specials who bray like donkeys instead of laughing and drink pints of Stella cos they can pretend to be Marlon Brando when ordering. I hate places like that.

The Barfly and Priscilla eventually showed up, neither of them bothered to even try their luck at the bar and we headed directly across to the Speigeltent. For some reason I always thought that ‘Speigel’ meant ‘Play’ but I think I’m getting my German mixed up. Anyway apparently the tent is so called because of the mirrors that line the wall. They had a bar which was open and serving bottles of German beer. I can’t remember what it was called but it was one of those half litre bottles so I looked QUIITE classy sitting there with my massive bottle of beer while around me ladies in feathers and satin sat sipping glasses of red wine. They were also serving Hoegaarden in those huge glasses, Mrs B said there were a few people at the bar who ordered rounds of these and then had to ferry back and forth as they couldn’t get their hands around three at a time.

It was all very Moulin Rouge. Girls with painted faces, feathered fans, cinched waists and stiletto heels, and boys in berets sprinkled through those of us in the audience who hadn’t dressed up. On stage ‘Heidi Hoopla from Sweden’ through herself through hoops literally as she rolled around the stage keeping hula hoops spinning round various parts of her body. A girl whose name I cannot remember did a fan dance. The Compere ‘Dusty Limits’ sang us a filthy version of the Phantoms ‘Music of the Night’ and then something went horribly wrong. No one is quite sure what happened but it was quite obvious there were problems backstage as the compere was stretching out his time on stage while waiting for the next act. ‘The Extraordinnaires’ (sp) came out and did some old style motown music. They were pretty good and got the audience going, up dancing and singing. Dusty Limits introduced the Usherettes who traipsed up on stage in corsets and suspenders at which point Priscilla grinned and said ‘That’s grand, women in underwear, I’m a happy man now.’ After that there were Can-Can dancers and ‘Lord XP’ the only male burlesque in the show. Of course I was at the bar so missed his act, although Mrs. B assures me he tore off his trousers to reveal well, not much of anything at all. As it was the Club’s 3rd birthday the show ended Miss Lily White who was covered in balloons and popped her way across the stage.

It was a good show, something different, funny and entertaining. However while the Spiegleltent was a unique venue I’d like to see them somewhere that they didn’t have to cut the show short. The Orb were playing at 10 o’clock so in addition to whatever had happened backstage you got the feeling that the show had been truncated to fit into just an hour and a half (with a fifteen minute intermission.)

Tassel Club are back in Dublin in December at the Sugar Club, if you are after something different I’d recommend it.

*Photo from www.thetasselclub.com

There have been all sorts of suggestions from friends, relations and virtual strangers as to things I could do on my week off between jobs.
‘Go for a mid-week break somewhere’
‘Go on a sun holiday’
‘Try and snag a ticket for the Electric Picnic.’
‘Take a drive down the countryside with your camera.’

All valid suggestions, except that I was watching the purse strings a little bit as I know how easy it is to spend, spend, spend when you are off work. (More on that later.) As for the suggestions of ‘driving down the countryside’ well if you’ve seen the weather lately you’ll know that was a bit of a no-go area. So crap weather coupled with watching my pennies meant I was on the look out for cheap and\or free things to do this week that didn’t involve trawling up and down Grafton St doing some window shopping. So here’s a bit of a quick list of things I got up to that were free.

The Beach – I’ve already documented my morning walk down on the beach last Monday. If I had been thinking properly I would have brought a lunch and a couple more rolls of film. But soon after I got home the rain came down in buckets so once again my timing was impeccable.

The Gallery of Photography – Took a wander in here on Wednesday to (once again) escape the rain. Currently the exhibition on display is ‘The Fifth Province’ by Tadhg Devlin. This was a selection of images – according to the gallery blurb - representing the Irish Diaspora. To me it looked like a bunch of photos that were taken at the end of a roll to use up the film and then blown up to hang on the wall. There was nothing technically proficient about the shots either as far as I could see. They could have been taken on a disposable camera for all the interest they held for me. In the second gallery upstairs one wall was given over to a selection of what I can only assume was the photographers parents as the same two people showed up again and again in each of the shots. Pictures of the back of people’s heads, of a table that hadn’t been cleaned after dinner, a man trimming hedges, a couple standing on their front doorstep. The kind of photos everyone shoeboxes full of at home, memories of nothing much at all.

The National Photography Archive – I hadn’t been in here before but the Barfly said there was an exhibition of photos from the early 20th century of the southeast (Waterford, Wexford, etc) so as it was still raining when I left the Gallery of Photography I crossed the square and ducked in here for a couple of minutes. The Archive gallery is not very large, comprising mainly the windowed room that is visible as you walk past. There is a small ‘corridor’ on the top level which is more interesting from an architectural point of view, but hardly large enough to be considered a second gallery.

The Dead Zoo – aka the Natural History Museum on Merrion Square. I love the fact that the museums and most of the galleries in Dublin are free to the public. In Toronto a day pass to the ROM ran about 7 or 8 dollars and that was 15 years ago. For something so big that you couldn’t possibly get around it in one day, the Irish museums being free are certainly worth it. I hadn’t been in the museum as I normally don’t bother to walk any further than the National History Museum on Kildare street to go and look at the gold hoards and the ceists. The Natural History Museum contains cabinets full of moth-eaten, mildewing stuffed animals. (erego ‘The Dead Zoo’) As I walked past the displays I could imagine being stuck in that old building at night with all of those glass-eyed animals and feeling fairly scared. As it was the final week before school starts the place was full of glass-eyed parents on a last ditch effort to entertain the kids until they could hand them over to their teachers. I got a bit stuck on the first floor and found myself wandering past glass displays of birds, fish and parasites. It being lunchtime and afraid I’d lose my appetite I spent most of my time in the upstairs galleries peering in at the bears and monkeys.

Shakespeare in the Park – I was on Grafton St. when a young girl in a puffball skirt and adorned with plastic bangles from her wrist to her elbow handed me a flyer advertising the ‘Public Shakespeare Company’ production of ‘Twelfth Night’. It looked fairly fine that afternoon so I headed in to catch the 2pm show. There were about 50 or 60 people draped around the Yeats Memorial in the Green, eating lunch and waiting for the show to start. It was a fairly okay production. A little bit ‘shouty-shouty Shakespeare’ for me. This version was set in 1982 (complete with ‘80s soundtrack) and although it’s already a role reversal comedy the company took it to extremes so that every characters role was reversed. So instead of Duke Orsino we had ‘Duchess Orsina’ and Malvolio became ‘Malvolia.’ It was a good way to spend an hour and a half and even when the rain started halfway through the third act people stayed put and either moved to sit under the trees or sat huddled under umbrellas. If you are at a loose end the production is running in the Green until September 9th daily at 2pm and 5pm.