It had to happen. It was only a matter of time before Dublin's most notorious night club got its own stage show. Paul Howard of Ross O'Carroll Kelly fame put pen to paper and brought Copper Face Jacks to the stage in the form of a musical. Helen Meany joined Sean Rocks on Arena to give us a flavour of the show, which runs in Dublin's Olympia until August 12th. She explained a little about ‘the Coppers effect’.
"It's certainly a phenomenon of our times in Dublin. It was established in 1996 on a very small scale and it has grown in popularity so much so that there are queues snaking down Harcourt Street certainly from Thursday to Sunday and even earlier in the week as well… It's huge now. It has the capacity of about 1000. It's particularly popular with people outside Dublin more so than Dubliners."
Copper Face Jacks was well on the map long before Dublin's Bryan Cullen raised the Sam Maguire and shouted "See yiz in Coppers!" but the stereotype of the guard/GAA player/teacher/nurse making up the bulk of Coppers revellers is one of the comedic pillars that holds up the show. In terms of plot, it's a West Side Story-style clash of the clans.
"It's a love across the divide, star-crossed lovers, between a very innocent young woman from Kerry who has moved to Dublin with stars in her eyes and she meets the captain of the GAA football team who is also in his day job a car clamper… He's a bit of a lad, he's the sort of lothario."
Someone who is not too happy about the blossoming romance is the Kerry girl's fiancé, who storms the city to win back the hand of his bride-to-be, but in terms of the show, is Helen happy about it? It's a "light touch" she says as far as satire goes and it relies on "a long, drawn-out extended gag about Dubliners versus so-called 'culchies'." Helen says that while the gags land initially, the show could benefit from a shorter running time but that there are some excellent performances from the cast. A benefit of seeing the show in The Olympia is, of course, that one can simply jump on the newly-extended Luas line afterwards and hop into the queue for Coppers. You never know when a GAA captain-cum-clamper will ask you for the shift.