Writer Ronan Carr reveals the strange tale behind his Drama On One play "To Sean With Love". And it's all true. Honestly.
Many years ago, I had an itch I needed to scratch. I wanted to solve a crime. Specifically, I wanted to investigate a murder in the noir-ish environs of the Northside Shopping Centre. So I made a short film called “Coolockland” and that dermatological issue was suitably resolved.
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Then, in the last year or so another notion overtook me. I got it into my head that I wanted to work with the innovative and iconoclastic director Joan Littlewood. I wanted her to direct a new play I had written. 1958 seemed to be a good time to do it in. She was at the top of her game then, directing Shillelagh Delaney’s “A taste of honey” and Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage”.
However there were two factors that conspired to thwart this notion. One was that Joan Littlewood was dead and the other was 1958 had passed a long time ago.
So, with this in mind, I wasn’t certain whether Joan would accept my call.
After a couple rings she answered.
“What’s your play called?” Joan inquired
“To Sean with Love” I said.
“Sounds dull.?”.
“No, it’s about Sean Kenny- the brilliant Irish stage designer. He was very famous in the 1960’s”
“You got any songs in it?”
“No”
“Jesus”
There was a long pause.
“Okay, Come see me Monday morning”
“I will.”
I hoped on a BEA flight out of Dublin Airport and arrived at the Theatre Workshop, Stratford East bright and early Monday Morning.
This trip; this notion of mine; this itch turned out to be what I consider the greatest mistake of my professional life.
Joan greeted me at the door of the theatre and ushered me inside. She sat me down in a corner of the stage to talk about my script.
Yes, Joan said, my script was a wonderful account of the great Sean Kenny. It illuminates his ground breaking designs for the theatre, his love affairs; his tony award, his early death but….”
There’s always a but…
“It’s predictable”
I was shaken.
Joan leaned forward.
“You see, Ronan, your script begins at the beginning, the middle is shackled to the centre and the conclusion concludes inevitably at the end. That’s what we, in this neck of the woods, call predictable”
“But Joan,” I pleaded “ people live a three act structure. They are born; they live and they die”
“Bollocks!” Joan explained. “ Have you ever read Beckett?”
“No”
Pause.
“Okay, let’s move on. If you want to work here”- Joan advised, “then you have to start thinking differently”
I did want to work there.
“Then let’s do something wonderful”
Joan arranged my digs. I was to lodge with a lovely young couple called Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath but as I knocked on their door, I wasn’t so sure. Was Ted and Sylvia together in 1958? I googled it. They were. The door opened and thanks to that little bit of research, I slept on their couch.
The next morning I was back at the theatre. Already I could see things were beginning to slip out of my hands.
Joan had organised a table read with her actors.
George from the TV series George and Mildred was there, Peggy Mitchell from Eastenders and to her side Victor Spaghetti provided the silly voices.
Littlewood turned to me and said- “Ronan I want you to prepare yourself. The company and I are going to take a Brechtian approach to the play”
The actors all nodded in approval. The way actors always do.
I weighed up the situation.
“Yes, yes, Joan, a Brechtian approach sounds wonderful”
With that Littlewood began ripping the pages out of my script. She then threw them all up in the air and asked Peggy Mitchell to grab a page as it came floating down.
“What’s the page number, Babs?”
“287” giggled Peggy
“That’s where we’ll begin”
Over the course of the day, Joan took apart the play. She turned the dialog inside out; put the scenes on their heads and sent them spinning into the refracted light of improvisation.
By five o’ clock, I hardly recognised the script I had sweated and slaved a whole afternoon writing.
I was beginning to dislike this Littlewood woman.
That night I lay depressed on the coach, Sylvia stroked my hair and Ted gave me a foot massage, I blurted out a dark secret that had being troubling me for hours.
“Ted? Sylvia? What does Brechtian mean?”
Ted googled it.
“Oh a Brechtian approach is perfect because according to Google that’s exactly what Sean Kenny did with his stage designs- he took everything away, stripped all the artificial away, exposed the back wall and the lighting rig and didn't pretend it wasn't pretend. It was in essence the fine art of suggestion.”
The next day was even worse.
An army of set builders were reconstructing Sean Kenny’s designs. In one corner there was the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired house that he built of the banks on the river Foyle; in another corner was his brilliant set for the musical Oliver! that changed the face of modern musical theatre; a group of technicians were hard at work recreating Peter Cook’s Establishment club that Sean Kenny deigned, and over at the side was a man illuminating the laser palaces that Kenny never got to do for David Bowie and his Diamond Dogs tour.
No, no, this isn’t what I wanted at all.
Before I could speak, Joan grabbed my arm and pushed me towards the music room.
“Time to work your bleedin' songs”
Behind the door sat a chunky figure at the piano. It was Lionel Bart. My Hero. This I felt was going to be one of the true collaborative events of the whole fiasco.
“All done” Bart said immediately.
“What’s all done?”
“I have finished. I have written all your songs for the show “
“Already? Where is my contribution?”
“You can make us a cup of tea”
That night as Ted and Sylvia fluffed my pillows and lay fresh sheets on my bed, I broke down in tears.
“Joan’s ruining it”
“It’s your work, Ronan” said Ted.
“Yes,” said Sylvia” it’s your work. Defend it”
And that’s what I did.
The next morning I walked right up to her. I jabbed my finger into her chest berating her for stealing my artistry to feed her own solipsistic vision of the world.(Ted taught me most of the words in that last sentence) I went on to accuse her of creative tyranny but before I could get her into a headlock I was rugby-tackled from behind by Yootha Joyce. She threw me out the stage door where waiting outside was Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin to give me a right old beating.
I was barred from all future rehearsals.
For a few days, I nursed my sorrows and wounds in The Crown Bar across the road. I blamed them. I cursed myself. I confided in barman,
“Why does every script meeting, I have, end with a kicking?”
I could see the cast and crew, across the way, being all innovative and brilliant. Bastards. I was hoping they would ask me back in. They didn’t. This wasn’t the place for me.
Ted kindly packed my bag and Sylvia put all my toiletries into a plastic container. They saw me off at a foggy Gatwick airport. I cancelled a planned stop-over in Isherwood’s Berlin and took the direct flight back to 2016.
I never saw Joan Littlewood again. I never knew what happened to my play.
Until now.
News has reached me from producer Aidan Mathews of RTÉ Radio that a recording of my play is going to be broadcast on Sunday September the 4th at 8pm on their Drama on One slot. I say my play, it’s really the Joan Littlewood version.
I was given a preview copy but I haven’t listened to it because frankly I don’t want to hear it. I won’t be a complete begrudger and tell you not to listen either but I will say this: my dream was to stage a three-hour epic about the life of Sean Kenny, done in Berkovian slow-motion with actors speaking in old French, underscored with the high pitched drone of a loyalist marching band... That was the dream. If you want to hear that dream being shattered by funny pastiches, satirical sketches and catchy songs then, go ahead, go nuts, listen to it, stream it, podcast the bejaysus out of it; I don’t care.
I for one, will be doing what I usually do on a Sunday evening, drifting out on the high plains of Kilmore and thinking about Dr Dre.
Ronan Carr’s play “To Sean with Love” will be broadcast on RTÉ's Drama On One on September 4th at 8 pm. You can listen to the play here.
