When Marie Jones first
wrote Stones in his Pockets, as far as the Irish economy was
concerned, the boom years were still in full swing. Tax breaks for
artists, in particular, had both enabled a creative community to
thrive as well as attracting Hollywood producers in search of picture
postcard locations. The result of this was a short-term deluge of
theme-bar style movies which saw large crews colonise entire villages
before leaving already deprived communities with nothing.
Rather than create a
polemical tract, however, the Belfast-born writer of Women on the
Verge of HRT did what she does best, and penned a two-man comedy that
made use of low-budget poor theatre techniques instead. This saw the
actors not only play the central roles of would-be film extras
Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn in a County Kerry backwater, but also
the play's other thirteen characters, including the film's director
and the Hollywood starlet who befriends one of the men in search of
some kind of authenticity.
“The state of Ireland
at the time was full of interesting contradictions,” Jones
remembers on the eve of Andy Arnold's new production of Stones in
his Pockets which heads up the Tron Theatre's summer season. “On
the one hand lots of films were being made because of these huge tax
breaks, but at the same time there was a real disintegration of a
rural culture which depended on the land. When that wasn't
economically viable anymore, a lot of young men moved away, and there
were a lot of suicides at the time.”
If such a backdrop
provides the thematic crux of the play, it is the physically
dexterous narrative style that sucker-punches audiences into
believing it's some kind of blarney-filled piece of slapstick
knockabout. Again, however, in the run-up to the play's first
production in an early form by Dubbeljoint theatre co at the Lyric
Theatre, Belfast and a subsequent tour of community halls throughout
1996, its style too was dictated by outside forces.
“Economically, it was
still difficult to do theatre with big casts,” says Jones, “but
that became part of the success of the play. People loved seeing the
actors risk disaster by having to flip between characters. One minute
they're playing a 75-year old man, then a couple of minutes later
they're playing a child.”
By the time the
production reached Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre three year's later as
part of the new writing space's Festival Fringe programme, Stones in
his Pockets was a fantastically slick mix of comedy and tragedy that
captured the imaginations of audiences in a way that even bigger
success was likely. Runs in Dublin and London's Tricycle Theatre in
Kilburn followed the Traverse before it transferred to the West End.
So successful did the production prove that its run was extended. In
the end it played at the Duke of York's theatre for a whopping three
years. Despite Jones' already successful commercial track record, for
a new play with a cast who weren't household names to achieve such a
feat was a phenomenon even Jones didn't expect.
“I thought the West
End was all about having big big productions with well-known actors,”
she says. “But here we were doing something with two actors
(Conleth Hill and Sean Campion) who at that time weren't known at
all.”
When Hill and Campion
took the play to Broadway, it was clear to Jones that “the play
became the star.”
This has often been the
way for Jones, who, as an actress and writer, was one of the founders
of the grass-roots-based Charabanc theatre company. In the 1980s.
While numerous plays were produced over the next few years, it was
Women on the Verge of HRT, originally produced the year before Stones
in his Pockets, that tapped into mass consciousness. That play
followed the journey of two middle-aged womens' journey as they went
on a pilgrimage to see singer Daniel O'Donnell. As with most of
O'Donnell's work, it mixed comedy and pathos in such a way that
allowed audiences into the play's world before making its point.
In this respect, Jones'
work has a common touch that very few writers possess. Yet, for all
their intelligent populism, there's an inherent political pulse too
to Jones' plays. This can be found in her most recent work, Fly Me to
the Moon, which appeared in an hour-long version as part of A Play, A
Pie and a Pint's lunchtime theatre seasons at Oran Mor in Glasgow in
2010. This play follows the travails of two hard-up community care
visitors on minimum wage who come into some money by way of a win on
the horses. The elderly man who put the bet on, however, who is one
of their regular charges, is unlikely to need it anymore. It is how
the women respond to the moral, ethical and legal dilemmas
surrounding their sudden windfall that makes for the gloriously edgy
farce that follows in Jones' directorial debut.
“My mother was in a
care home for two years,” says Jones of Fly Me to the Moon, which
is currently running at the Waterfront Studio in Belfast following a
sell-out season at the city's Grand Opera House. “I could see these
people who were on minimum wage, which all came about because of the
economic depression, and in the play they get further and further
into the mire. Because I've never left Belfast and still live here, I
see these sorts of people all the time. Here are two people who have
absolutely no power whatsoever, but who suddenly find a way of taking
control of their own lives.”
This sadly isn't
something that happens to Charlie and Jake in Stones in his Pockets,
where the promise of a romantic fantasy-life is quickly thwarted by
harsh realities once the Hollywood circus leaves town. In hindsight,
the play now looks like an unintended metaphor for how the latest
recession has left communities high and dry now the good times are
over.
“It's got worse,”
Jones says of the current economic climate in Ireland. “The films
were good for the economy in terms of filling up hotels, but there's
not the same tax breaks anymore, so the hotels don't get filled. The
film people tend to go to Prague or the Isle of Man now. Everybody
knows there's lots of empty hotels now.”
The ongoing recession
hasn't stopped the global success of Stones in his Pockets, however,
which continues to be played around the world. Oddly, this has seen
it tour to both Iceland and Greece, both once thriving nations that
have now been blighted by the global financial collapse. Perhaps, as
in Ireland, Scotland, London and Broadway, there's a sense of
recognition there that's easy to latch onto.
“Audiences love it,”
says Jones, still sounding surprised some sixteen years after it was
first staged.
“There's something
there about these two men chasing disaster, and I think there's a lot
of truth in there about the chocolate-boxing of Ireland that
translates in a way we never expected.”
Stones in his Pockets,
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, July 5th-21st
The Herald, July 3rd 2012
ends
Comments