Playwright Billy Roche introduces Druid Theatre's new touring production of his classic 1993 play The Cavalcaders, which opens in Galway on May 20th before embarking on a nationwide tour this summer.
I was to meet Garry Hynes in London, in her favourite little quaint hotel somewhere in the heart of Soho. She had just taken over the reins at the Abbey Theatre and she was interested in commissioning me to write a new play. 'Did I have anything in mind?' she wondered. As it happened I did - the bones of a story.
The new play would be set in an old-fashioned shoemaker’s shop. It would feature a man called Terry (although I didn’t know his name yet) - a fatherless, Arthurian-like creature who had lost his wife to his best friend some years ago. The play - a ‘Camelot in blue jeans’ tale - would open in the here and now with the shop dark and lifeless (à la The Waste Land). Terry would be there to bid farewell to it all. The second scene would see us peeling back the invisible briars so we could catch a fleeting glimpse of his world in slightly happier and healthier times; it would be a time-memory play. And that’s all I knew about it.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Listen: RTÉ Arena talks to Cavalcaders director Arron Monaghan and actor Garrett Lombard
To her credit, Garry bit the bullet and commissioned me there and then. It was thrilling for me because that very night my play Belfry was due to premiere at the Bush Theatre in London which meant that hail, rain, or shine (regardless of reviews or public opinion) I would have a job to do at the end of the day.
And so, for the next year and a half or thereabouts, I set about my task. Terry turned out to be a strange creation: regal, selfish, cruel, charming, comic, dark, brooding, unreasonable, loveable but often unlikeable. Time after time he surprised and worried me with the terrible things he said and did. And yet my heart went out to him. Here was a man who was surrounded by love and yet refused to believe that he was worthy of it, and he went out of his way to prove the point. Against the odds I did my best to try and steer him into a safe harbour and I could only hope that he’d heed my advice and go there.
Watch: The cast of The Cavalcaders in rehearsal
The Waste Land, The Golden Bough, Tennyson’s Idylls of The King, From Ritual to Romance, and The White Goddess all helped me to marry myth to reality and vice-versa. Of course, I didn’t know all the ins and outs of it then. I didn’t know for instance that this small band of shoemakers would become a barbershop quartet by night (the search for harmony), or that Terry’s uncle Eamon would turn out to be a Merlin of sorts, or that his old handed-down tuning fork would weave the magic of Excalibur. I had no idea how dark things would become.
At this point, I must tell you about the old piano that came back into my possession - it rose from the ashes of my first novel Tumbling Down. In real life - like Davy Wolfe in the story - I grew up in my father’s waterfront bar, The Shamrock Bar, which mysteriously (in fiction and in fact) burned down one rainy night. The piano, I always assumed - and I said so in the final pages of the book - perished in the fire. But no, unbeknownst to me, someone had rescued it the day before the disaster, and while I always imagined it as a burnt, charred, twangy thing, it was, all the while, living happily and safely in someone else’s parlour.
It was on this old, battered instrument that I composed the songs for The Cavalcaders. I suppose it’s safe to say that it’s because of it - and thanks to it - that the play gained its music-hall aspect, not to mention its baroque and sacred centre (Eamon’s Mass has a cameo and sin is everywhere). Yes, now that I think of it, religion - or should I say the Gods - played me like a violin. In fact, if I was asked to boil it all down I‘d probably say that The Cavalcaders is a pagan play that has been Christianised. Or is it the other way round? Oh, no, hold it, hang on … if writing The Cavalcaders has taught me anything, it’s this: when in doubt, sing.
Hey mister
Did you see that girl?
She walks around like she Owned the world
You’d think she owned the world
The Cavalcaders opens in The Mick Lally Theatre, Galway on May 20th before touring to Sligo, Longford, Roscommon, Limerick, Kerry, Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary and Dublin. Find out more here.
