A Wake in the West goes Stateside

GORT’S Wild Swans took to the air this week, winging their way to San Francisco. Thousands flocked to see them in the annual St Patrick’s Day parade, which wound its way through the city on Saturday before the real performance began on Tuesday when the theatre group staged A Wake in the West in the Californian city.
It is almost a year since The Wild Swans Theatre Company performed the show publicly for the first time and since then its production of the Michael John Ginnelly comedy has had unprecedented success, with sell-out shows in Gort, Belfast, Ennis, Galway and Newport. Now it has sold out a 600-seat venue in the City By The Bay.
“We are surprised by how well this show has done. When we rang the agent for the performing rights to A Wake in the West, we said we were planning to do it for four nights and she said ‘I guarantee you, you will do more than four’ and she was right but we didn’t know it would reach the height it has gotten to. We have people who have seen it four or five times and it has created such a buzz around Gort and Clare as well. It has given so many people such a lift and that is something that was badly needed,” the play’s director, Imelda Counihan told The Clare Champion.
“People have come back to us and said it was great to forget their troubles for two hours, without bad language and without double meaning, the play is so cleverly written,” she added.
Among the thousands of people who have now seen the show performed by the Wild Swans was its writer, Michael Joe Ginnelly who, Imelda says, was very impressed.
“A guy who had performed as Barney in the original production saw we were doing the Town Hall in Galway and he rang looking for tickets. The Town Hall gave him Michael Hughes’ phone number and he gave him Austin McInerney’s number. The show was sold out but when he told him who the tickets were for, Austin said we would find him a seat. It was a big event going to the Town Hall in Galway for us so we didn’t tell the cast that Michael Joe Ginnelly was going to be there because we felt it wouldn’t be fair. He and his daughter attended and wished us all the best on our trip to San Francisco. He came up on stage, met the cast and crew and saw the set and gave us a bit of advice,” Ms Counihan outlined.
The group came across the comedy hit a little by accident.
“We were looking at The Year of the Hiker but we were having difficulty casting it because we wouldn’t have a huge number of young men in the group. So we were sitting in my living room one night and Shane [Counihan, Imelda’s nephew] said he had the script of A Wake in the West in the car.
“What we do is that throughout the year different members of the cast would be reading scripts or going to plays and getting the script. He just happened to have this script. He brought it in and we started to laugh and decided that this is the play we are going to do and that is how it came about. It is such an apt play for the time we are in where people need a laugh,” Imelda surmised.
The logistics of bringing the show to the US took considerable effort. Kevin Glynn, who plays Barney, made his way to San Francisco earlier in the month to construct the set and gather props but as Imelda points out, you can’t get everything in America. In an effort to bring the true wake experience to the San Francisco audience, the remaining cast members packed their suitcases last weekend with some unusual additional weight in the form of what most people would consider rubbish.
“We were hoping that the show would appeal to the ex-pats and did our utmost to bring props with us that they would be able to associate with Ireland, things like Mikado, Siucra, Tayto, Guinness and Harp and those kind of things, just the packaging though, not the products and we dressed the set with those kind of things. I would think for any of the older population who have been to wakes in Ireland, these would spark off a memory for them,” Imelda outlined.
The group’s decision-making process is unusual and therefore choosing a play is reliant on the cast.
“What we do with the Swans really is we look at the script and cast it as a group. Then someone who may not be cast as a character in the play, we would ask if that person has an interest in directing. I would normally be part of the cast but comedy would not be my strong point so when we were casting this, I said I would love to direct it. Of the group taking part in this production, about half of us have directed other shows.
“Our approach wouldn’t be the norm. We like everyone to have a flavour of each element of production to see what it is like to be backstage or to direct or to act and we also like to encourage newcomers on stage, so that we are hoping they will be the Wild Swan future. For this production we have one person for whom it is her acting debut. Her name is Kate Sherry and she played the part of Joan in this production. We would also have a chap called Shane Counihan, who does a lot of backstage production for us but for this he played understudy to Jim Early, who played the part of Fr Cassidy. He took to the boards one night when Jim was unavailable and he did a great job,” Imelda explained.
“We have found a few younger people but we are always recruiting. People can get in touch via our Facebook page. We have an open door policy. While we have a core group that drives the drama group, we would also have a group of people that we can call on. Where we feel that someone outside the core group would be better cast, we pick up the phone and tell them there is a space for them. We seem to be getting a few enquiries from younger people who are interested and that is fantastic,” she added.
While comedy has proven hugely popular, Imelda is giving little away about what the Swans will do to follow A Wake in the West.
“The big push from the public is for another comedy but it will be tricky to find a script. We will be doing something but we will have to wait and see what that is,” she concluded.