Joe Dolan and the art of car maintenance

GLÓR will be the venue for hit play The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down on September 14-15, which will be performed by Glenaduff Productions.

 

The play is written and directed by Padraic McIntyre, who set it in his own native Cavan and of course a certain deceased midlands legend is a central character.

“It’s a play set in a pub on a St Stephen’s night. There has been a party for a local character called the Horse Munnelly and as the night goes on people head home, but when there’s a knock to the door, it’s Joe Dolan.

“He comes in and he does a concert in the pub for the locals that are left behind. The people wake up the next morning and there’s a few question marks over what has gone on the night before.”

He describes it as a comedy show with some music in it and as such it has a fairly broad appeal. “I found from working in theatres down the years that some people love music and some people like plays and if you can mix the two you’ve got a whole new audience. Some people don’t like sitting through a full play and some people don’t go to concerts but we’ve got the mix here. And it’s not a musical, it’s a play with music in it.”

Padraic says that while Joe Dolan songs would have been played in his house as he grew up, he wasn’t his biggest fan.

“When you’re a teenager you rebel against these things, but when I went to write the play and I came to the moment when someone knocked on the door, I thought who else would you rather come into a pub and do a concert but Joe Dolan? He’s an Irish icon and a legend in loads of ways and when I started listening to the music for the play I realised how talented he was, he was a wonderful singer. Myself and John O’Grady [who plays Joe Dolan in the show] sat down and we realised how good a singer he was technically. That was tough enough to recreate but I think we’ve done that and we do justice to the songs.”

While Joe Dolan’s fan base has helped the play, it’s definitely not just for fans of the Mullingar singer.

“Some people do go for Joe but I’m very proud of the play as it stands, on its own. The Joe Dolan thing was probably a help to make it such a hit. We’ve done two runs in the Olympia and we’ve been all around the country as well.

“The Joe Dolan title gave it a help with audiences but some of the best compliments I got were from people who said they forgot Joe Dolan was in it because they were enjoying the play so much. It’s set in a small country pub and all of us from rural areas can appreciate comings and goings and the characters that are there,” Padraic added.

Over the last few years smaller budgets have led to far smaller casts in Irish plays and a very large number of one-man shows. But The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down doesn’t follow this pattern at all. “There’s about 12 to 14 of a cast and the way that theatre is going nowadays, there are usually one or two-man shows but I think people appreciate the big cast and the full set and the lights and all that.

“Financially, it’s very tricky to tour something with the numbers that we have in it but the play was written (with that many characters) and while at times I did consider cutting bits out of it, for a pub like that you need a bit of energy and numbers in it, for it to be believable.

“It has worked very well wherever we’ve went and audiences have loved it. It’s a good night’s entertainment and with the way things are, it’s no harm to get a good laugh and there’s the music as well.”

Padraic trained as an actor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff and worked as an actor in Britain for many years before coming home to Cavan, where he set up his own theatre company. He says he never anticipated the success of The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down.

“It started as a three-night thing here in Virginia and it’s grown from that, we’ve up on 100 shows done now at this stage. Even on the night of the first dress rehearsal, I wasn’t convinced it was going to work but it was something like what happened in Limerick with Alone It Stands. You can’t sit down and write a hit, it just sort of happens sometimes. We’ve been lucky.”