I went along with my darling friend Country Gay to see Sam Shephard's new play Kicking a Dead Horse last night.
Country Gay and I had our pre-theatre drink in an 'authentic Irish bar' packed full of Americans who were asking other Americans the rules of Rugby.
'But are there field goals?' they asked, drinking 'authentic' Irish Guinness. And 'how high can a score go?' plus my favourite, 'The New Zealand team don't even look when they do a pass back.'
'Everyone in work said it's terrible.' CG says.
'Everyone?"
'Well five people.'
'Aw fuck.' I glumly look at my drink and remember a time I was made go to see a Japanese play so dull my hair frizzed up in an attempt to block out the sound from my ears.
'But opinions are subjective.' Country gay counters his own statement.
This is true, some people like Marmite and some people think jazz is perfectly acceptable.
The Americans say something about infield defenders.
'Let's get out of here.' Country Gay said.
'Rokay raggy.'
We toodle across the bridge and enter
other Dublin and head for the theatre. We raced up stairs and had ourselves an 'authentic' drink at the Abbey bar.
'There's Sam Shepherd CG, get him to sign your script.'
'Where?' said CG.
'Sitting right there.'
'I can't go-'
Bollocks to that. I march him over. CG gets his script signed I shake hands with Mr. Shepherd and wish him luck. I ask him is he nervous. he's says he's never comfortable before hand. He asks my name, I tell him. I say this will be his first production I have watched. He takes this on board and says, 'Well I hope you enjoy it.'
CG wishes him luck.
After a pee (me) and a smoke (CG) we take our seats. The Abbey looks great, high slopes and comfy chairs. So comfy indeed that the man seated next to CG promptly falls asleep the moment the curtain is drawn back over the stage.
The play start slowly. On a sparsely lit stage, Stephen Rae comes out of a grave he has dug for his dead horse and so begins his angry searching monologue. His frustrated, self pitying, ultimately surrendering rant. Here is a man who wanted one last trail through the 'authentic' Wild west, the romantic West of his youth. Here is a softened art dealer, made rich by plundering the very authentic west he now strives to seek. Dreaming of his youth, when his hands could rope steer and he knew he could survive alone, sleeping on the prairie floor. Here is a man with 'age hanging from him like a moss' who sees death ten years away, a death of sorts, when his body will crumble and his will can only follow. And what has he got for company on his quest? A dead horse, a horse he himself killed through poor feeding, because he wanted the jazz the old horse up.
Here is a man who aches to be what he once was and who laments the passing of his life, his youth, his virility, who cries out against his aging ways and battles against comfort and companionship, only to realise too late that comfort and companionship are not the lessors of evils. And when faced with an open grave in a desolate wilderness, what man in his right mind would not like to be home, on the sofa with his wife, listening to the radio, in comfort.
All right. So I loved it. I think I got it. I sure as shit swallowed up the lines and clung to the sentiment.
After wards we clapped and clapped. Rae's performance was a delight, even if his second voice was more Woody Allen than not, but then I thought afterwards, why not Woody for a neurotic art dealer?
We hit the bar for an 'authentic ' post play drink and gawked at all the somebodies. There was Sam Neill, enjoying a pint, a dahling playright whose name I forget, there's Alan Stanford, and that could be one of the Cusacks and that white haired chap, he's in the Tudors, CG said, and I nod, for CG knows these things.
I meet Sam Shepherd coming back from the loo.
'Well, what did you think?" he said, as his wife spoke to a photo hog.
'I loved, It was a real lament.'
'Good' he said and nodded slowly.
'Goodnight' I said, but he was already being sucked into the maw of the public and my stomach was growling.
We hopped a cab home, mwah mwah. I thanked CG for a lovely evening and dropped him off. On the way to my house my cabbie told me all about the 'The woman who walked into Doors' which he and CG saw. I told him Roddy Doyle is about to open his production of The Playboy of The Western World. Somewhere between Crumlin and Templeogue he managed to tell me that a man once offered to 'splash his fucking brains all over the dashboard'. I thought, 'How authentic! The wild West lives!'
And then I got home, had a cheese sandwich and two bottles of beer and went to bed.
I slept like a dead horse.
Labels: This fucking horse.
