Reviews
The Irish Times - 22nd Nov 1999
Johnny Watterson sees Munster's famous 1978 win over the All, Blacks brought to the stage
Act I, Scene 1
John Breen rolls out of bed in the winter of 1997 and a light flicks on in his head.
He begins to see unconnected events fusing together. He sees Thomond Park . He sees Seamus Dennison pole axing Stu Wilson. He sees himself as a boy nicking tyres for a bonfire on Halloween night. He sees a big adventure. He hears 12,000 Limerick voices screaming at Munster and the All Blacks. He sees David and Goliath.
Big characters drift into his mind. Wardy, Tom Kiernan, Donal Caniffe, Moss Springer. You were there, right. You were one of the 50,000. Thomond Park was never so full. Maybe it was 100,000. Rain was forecast but stayed away. The sun came out. One of those days when a record 200,000 turned up. History. Legend. Folklore. You were part of it. We all were, 4000,000 of us outside who couldn't get in.
Act ll, Scene 1
"First of all we'll do the ear biting" says John Breen. An empty room in the National Ballroom on Parnell Square , and the cast are scrumming down.
"Hold on my knickers have gone " squeaks a body from the bottom of the pile. This doesn't happen at Thomond Park . They peel off while the knickers are adjusted and the form another heap on the mat. "I can see an ear..bite it....arghhh...I can see an ear..CRUNCH IT..arghhh. I can see an ear...chew it.arghhh." The bloodless ear biting scene.
Six actors, 5 male 1 female have been charged with springing to life Goliath's 12-0 capitulation to David.
Choicely cast Moss Keane is five feet tall and could not sink 10 pints. He also wore a bra. It suits him . He is called Niamh McGrath and is the smallest of the 6 actors in Breen's play Alone it Stands.
"When I come on stage shouting as Moss Keane I get a good audience reaction" she says "I thought John was messing when he told me that I was playing Moss.. We met him one night..he was dead chuffed. "I just come out with this big voice, put up my shoulders real big and take a deep breath"
As a child Breen was swathed in rugby folklore. St Enda's, Garryowen RC and Myles Breen's saloon bar were his alma maters. The busiest night in the bar's history was on the night of the All Blacks defeat. Breen was 12 years old and already a disciple of the game.
"A colleague of mine Mike Finn wrote a play called " Pig Town " "He had a little piece about the game in the play. It was like a history of Limerick for a hundred years. I said to myself "Oh my God that would be a great play. But I wasn't married to the idea because I thought, well, how do you stage a rugby match. It was 12-0. It wasn't that interesting. But when I read about Donal Caniffe's, father, who died during the match, I thought to myself that's an amazing story. I knew that was the hook that I could tie the story around. I think I've done it justice.
Donal has seen it and I think he's quite pleased. I've been very conscious that these are real people we're talking about and I think I do honour his father in the play. That was what made me decide to write it."
Former Cork hurler Dan Caniffe, father of Munster 's captain that day, Donal, died while listening to the match on the radio. It was only after the final whistle and mid the euphoria that Donal was called from the dressing room and informed of the news by coach Tom Kiernan.
Act lll, Scene I
New Zealander and current coach, Rhys Ellison, is doing the Haka in a church building in Limerick . The cast are swinging their arms and thumping their chests. For the moment they are warriors. Moreover it's a great piece to pocket.
"When you meet Rhys he is so quietly spoken, a lovely man," says Breen . "He has a real dignity about him and spoke in a way that you wouldn't normally associate with rugby players. He spoke about life and death and your spirit---but Jesus when he does the HAKA..."
Breen also asked Ellison how to stage Dennison's heroic tackle on Stu Wilson in the opening quarter. Unknown to New Zealand Kiernan unfashionably at the time, had the Munster players watch the All Blacks the day before the game, using a cutting edge technology of the time---video. They noticed how Wilson often came from the wing and in between the two centres. Dennison was waiting.
"Still it was a genuine collision between two guys going at top speed" says Donal Spring who played that day in the back row along side young Munster's Colm Tucker and Cork Constitution's Christy Cantillon, who scored Munster's try.
The guy who acts it does it well. He stands up and smiles. But Dennison did wreck himself in that tackle. He didn't play for ages after that.
In the church building Ellison explains the sweet science of how to take a winger out with a pulverising big hit. The cast watch and listen. "We said ..er,ok,.we won't do that" says Breen. "I went to see the play in Landsdowne with Donal Canniffe and Jimmy Bowen not believing you could do a play about a game," says Spring. "But it was done cleverly. The width of it was impressive, so many things brought in. We went in slightly sceptical but everyone was impressed. The standard of acting was very high."
The last folk memory is how Breen sees the day. In his mind every other big sporting event or national occasions has been dissected and parsed by television. Munster 's game was shown only in highlight form with 1 camera as Network 2 was being launched in Cork at the time. There is about 10minutes of footage, the rest left on the floor of some editing suite in Montrose, the pictures and the drama are now rooted in the oral tradition and because of that medium the match has grown and achieved epic proportions.
" Some of us have thought that RTE did us a big favour," says Spring dryly. "Because now no one can see the whole match."
The set is sparse, only several mats on the floor, some Munster and All Black jerseys and lights. Far from being a clichéd play about rugby jocks and legend buildings, it promises humour and pace.
It is not the rendition an IRFU subcommittee would have commissioned. " You got to remember that Munster did this 21 years ago" says Breen .
" This was before Jack Charlton. This was before U2. Ireland had nothing in the 70's. There was little around where we could stand up and go 'yeah we're Irish.'
In '78 there was nothing and this was something. The All Blacks were super stars. These boys were like The Rolling Stones coming to town. They'd big side burns and big hair. We won't see their like again. And you must remember the Munster team beat the best team in the world and went back to work the following day."
Final Act
They've changed into the red of Munster now. Thick columns of sunlight have come in through the Georgian windows from behind the Garden of Remembrance . The cast have limbered up and gone through their voice exercises. They are in a knot on the mats. Heads, legs, knees and arms, the usual rugby meatball. Breen is coaching.
"When you get grabbed by the balls what do you do?"
Clenched teeth and squinting eyes, a head cranks sideways from between a woman's thighs. "You scream....Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
The Irish Times
27th Jan 2001 Kevin Myers
An Irishman's Diary
Alone it Stands , beginning its final week in the Andrew's Lane Theatre , Dublin before moving to the Civic Theatre in Tallagh , is one of the cleverest, funniest, most brilliantly crafted plays you are ever likely you see . Its writer and director John Breen has married rugby to the dramatic arts and produced an absolutely delightful offspring.
Even to have arranged a blind date between the stage and the oval ball seems to have as much promise as organising a dinner between Peter Robinson and Bernadette McAliskey; you wouldn't expect them to stay together for the duration of the bread- roll.
It's not that rugby by its nature, with its complex running patterns and brute physicality, seems beyond capture on the stage. There is also the small matter of the sort of people who play and follow rugby. They are about as theatrical as the fair Bernadette is Orange . If you cross-checked the membership of voluntary societies in any university, the two most likely to have absolutely no members in common would be the rugby club and dramsoc. They stand at the opposite ends of the occupational spectrum, mutual distain being perhaps the only quality which united them.
So how can those two profoundly antipathetical elements, matter and anti-matter, be brought together, not just to co-exist begrudgingly, but to produce a dramatic triumph?
One word: Munster
So different
What is it about Munster that makes it so different from the other provinces?
Why does it, in any of its manifestations, seem to guarantee character, resilience, courage, resourcefulness, intelligence, in any code? An All-Ireland final without a Munster team competing is somehow lacking. And sport being a metaphor for other things, and much as I loathe the War of Independence as an unnecessary conflict, it is hard not to admire the tenacity and courage of the people of Munster throughout its duration.
So, as in all things, in rugby (unlike Leinster ) Munster never surrenders. The game is over only when the team bus leaves the ground, as tomorrow's game will undoubtedly testify. Of course, Munster has its class divisions, but in rugby, and in Limerick in particular, they seem to dissolve completely. Working-class people play and follow rugby there in the same way that they follow soccer in Dublin . The ordinary boundaries that cut through Irish rugby like a Berlin wall vanish when they converge on the Shannon .
Utter incomprehension
This is not without difficulties. At Musgrave Park for the Munster Match last Saturday, I fell into conversation with two spectators, who I suspect from their appearance might have been unskilled labourers. On the other hand they might have been from Mars, for all I could understand of their speech. It was, to be sure, very musical but utterly baffling, and I responded to it with those vigorous nods and general noises of assent which the seasoned traveller, in Cairo or Cork alike, deploys both to give the impression that he has seldom met minds of such depth and acuity and, more importantly, to mask his utter incomprehension at what is being said to him .
The outcome can be either an excruciating companionship of ceaseless mummery, the purchase of an unwanted camel, or the sale of a teenage daughter to a 75 year-old kilim dealer; on a bad day all three.
If you know of anyone who can give a camel a good home, let me know.
Limerick rugby's classlessness gives the game there a cachet, a plausibility that it lacks elsewhere. And there is something else about Limerick . It is the home of one the great occasions in Irish sport; the victory of Munster over the all-conquering All Blacks in 1968.
So how can you make a play about that? I wish I had answered that for you; instead John Breen has-by a combination of ingenious writing, brilliant dramatic construction, and superb directing. And it doesn't really matter if you think that Dolphin is a cousin to Porpoise and a Cork Con man is a Leeside fraud, or conversely, if the word "theatre" suggests sinister cross-dressing homosexual pinko pacifists no man in his senses would turn his back on.
Alone it Stands is a theatrical occasion which, like rugby in Limerick , crosses all boundaries. We can just ask why this play has been presented only in fringe theatre. Is it too accessible? Is it too unaffectedly amusing? Is it because it features the sort of people who as quintessentially un-theatrical as rugby players and supporters? Or is it because it so triumphantly subverts theatre's self-consciously theatrical definition of itself.
Limerick society
Haven't a clue. No matter. Whether you're from Coolock, and you have never been to the theatre in your life, or are a long suffering resident of Landsdowne Road who loathes Rugby as the invention of the devil, you will love Alone it Stands . As well as being very funny, it is a delightful study of Limerick society, of the qualities of courage and determination, and of love-love between man and woman, between men together, and between father and son.
You will probably weep with laughter. You might equally well weep with pride. And suddenly, out of the blue you might find yourself weeping in pity.
I have not seen a finer Irish play in years . I suspect only dramaturgical snobbery of the most witless has prevented John Breen's becoming the household name which one day it assuredly will be.
The London Times
7th August 2000 . Benedict Nightingale
Edinburgh Theatre
The Good, the bad and the rugby
On-the-ball literally as well as metaphorically a small ebullient company called Yew Tree had come from Ireland with Alone it Stands, a re-creation , somewhat indebted to John Godber's Up 'n' Under , of perhaps the most famous rugger match in that legend-loving island's history. Did you know that back in 1978 Munster achieved a feat to compare with Athens 's defeat of the Persian Empire , David's slaying of Goliath, or at least one of Gerry's more thorough routs of Tom? They beat the mighty All Blacks, then on an otherwise all-conquering European tour, by 12 to nil.
Two benches, 5 actors and a splendidly robust actress called Niamh McGrath are all that are needed to give us both the game itself ( complete with rucks, bone-quaking tackles and sly testicle-twistings) and the events that preceded and following it.
These include Maori war dances, a venomous pep-talk from a New Zealander coach capable of fining a player for "audible sighing" when he's ordered to do 200 press-ups, and his Irish counterpart's still more persuasive word at half time: "immortality; lads, how much do you want it"?
Well they want and they get it, while a feverish fan's wife gives lonely birth to twins in hospital and one of Munster player's father dies of a heart attach from listening to and excited radio commentary in a pub. Could we have done without the semi-autobiographical sections in which the author-director John Breen, recalls running amok, as a boy gang member at a the time? Probably; but at least this allows him a place on the periphery event as his native Limerick can recall.
Sunday Herald
13 th August 2000 Graeme Virtue
Fringe Theatre
Alone it Stands
Traverse Theatre
On all Hallow's Eve 1978 , sporting history was made in the Irish town of Limerick . The mighty New Zealand all Blacks rugby team were defeated - for the first time ever, and to the tune of 12-0- by local part time scrumsters Munster . There were no TV cameras to record the epochal victory for posterity, but Limerick-born writer and director John Breen has attempted to re-stage it in rollicking, rip-snorting fashion - while taking a wee bit of dramatic licence along the way.
The result is an accelerated dramatic sideshow of a community obsessed with rugby, with just 6 actors taking on over 60 different characters and various physically demanding reconstructions with gusto. Although the titanic match is the obvious centrepiece, the whole tale is augmented with various engaging back stories - not least the true-life plot strand dealing with the death of Munster captain Donal Cannife's father during the game itself.
Throughout the imaginatively staged performance, sole lady Niamh McGrath holds her own (both deep in the ruck and during simulated childbirth), while Malcolm Adams' spitting All Black coach provides another particularly entertaining delight.
Rugby may not be more than a matter of life and death' as Bill Shankley once blithely said of football, but here it effortlessly exists on the same level.
Alone it Stands is an exhilarating and celebratory experience; in short, rucking brilliant
Publication Examiner
4 th April 2000 Declan Hassett
Theatre Review
More than a game, this is pure joy.
Alone it Stands is as good as the whole country has been saying for months and is enjoying its second tour at the Half Moon Studio Theatre, The Cork Opera House, Cork all this week and next.
Written and directed by John Breen , brilliantly lit by Gerry Meagher and played by a cast of 6 with the fervour of the Munster pack that shocked the All Blacks on that magical afternoon in Thomond Park , Limerick , in 1978.
The record books reveal a 12-0 victory for the home side but John Breen's play is not so much about the statistic but about the flesh and blood, the very soul which could fashion such a win against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Breen has captured the intensity of that afternoon but above all he encapsulated , all of 22 years later, just what the winning of one match meant to so many. And this is not so much about a match but more about life itself; any life, when only one result is predicted and the odds are stacked.
Alone it Stands is a joy on several counts. The write laces the story with marvellous humour and humanity. He manages to thread, through all the grunts and groans, a seam of real life tragedy with great delicacy and sensitivity. The cast are a dream team and their artistic triumph on stage matches anything achieved on the field of play. So catch if you can Malcolm Adams, Conor Delaney, Gerry McCann, Niamh McGrath, Ciaran McMahon, and Karl Quinn.
The studio theatre at the Opera House was distinctly chilly last night so it could have been the Thomomd Park stand on October 31 st , 1978 .
This is a play for anyone who has ever dreamed, and seen a dream come true.
Evening News
3 rd August 2000
Alone it Stands Traverse
Those film-makers who are still looking for the next Full Monty might cast an envious eye over Irish playwright John Breen's Alone it Stands at the Traverse tonight.
The feel-good triumph-of-the-underdog comedy has already been a smash hit in Ireland and Woody Harrelson has already checked it out and reportedly loved it.
Alone it Stands tells the true tale of Ireland 's most famous rugby match in 1978, when plucky little Munster pulled off and almost unbelievable victory against the mighty All Blacks at Thomond Park , Limerick .
Expecting an easy walkover, the New Zealanders were astonished to end up losing12-0. The amateur players became national heroes and the area has been celebrating ever since.
The story's well known in Ireland , where writer-director Breen's show was nominated for Best New Play award and won Best Director.
But he's keen to emphasise, it's not necessary to know much about the game to enjoy the play. "We've had 157 performances in Ireland and people all over the world have seen it who didn't know a thing about rugby. You just need to know about life," argues the softly-spoken Limerick City man.
"Y'see, in 1978 Ireland was a very depressed country. There were people being murdered every day in the North and mass unemployment, especially in Limerick .
Ten years later we had people like U2 and Riverdance to represent us, but then there was nothing. Then Munster beat the greatest rugby team in the world and the country just went insane. It was a huge, high cultural event."
A 12 year old at the time, Breen spent the day of the match gathering wood for a Halloween bonfire, but some of the players and many supporters later started the celebrations at his father's pub.
Later on he played rugby himself and decided to write" a wee play to be performed at a few rugby clubs and small theatres," after realising that it was 21 years since the great event.
Though 12 members of the team went on to play for the national squad, they didn't ever match their success. The rest returned to their day jobs. Most of the original players have now seen the play, along with the current Irish rugby team who were taken to see it the night before a big match to inspire them.
But one of the Munster heroes, Moss Keane must have been rather taken aback to find himself portrayed on stage by Niamh McGrath who also plays one of the All Blacks.
Afterwards, he apparently said her fierce portrayal was "far scarier than I ever was on the pitch."
The 6 actors between them play 62 characters, including a dog, and recreate the crucial match using only the bare stage, a ball and some athletic choreography.
Along with the tale of match, Breen weaves scenes of his childhood self and the fanatical supporters trying to get tickets for the game, while one's pregnant wife goes into labour.
You can almost hear the film producers pitching it as "Up 'n' Under meets Fever Pitch," with the message of the show, according to its creator, being "ordinary people achieve extraordinary things every day"
The Scotsman.
26 th April 2000
Arches Theatre, Glasgow Joyce McMillan
I don't know about flowers being born to blush unseen, but the Arches |Theatre's Spring Greens season of new Irish work still seems to be languishing in a slightly neglected corner of the cabbage patch. The latest victim - attracting a crown of just a few dozen on its opening night - was The Yew Tree and Island Company of Mayo's Alone it Stands, a show that surely needs a roaring capacity audience to do it full justice.
Played out on bare stage by a cast of 5 large blokes and one feisty woman, Alone it Stands is a big, joyful, bruising piece of theatre - visibly inspired by John Godber's great hull truck rugby show Up 'n' Under - about the magical day in Limerick, back in 1978, when the local Munster rugby team beat the touring All Blacks 12.0.
In a swift 2 hours including a interval, writer-director John Breen and his cast make a fine job of demonstrating all over again how this sub-genre of theatre can both celebrate the full, exhilarating force of masculinity at its most rampant (in a confined space, the company's performance of the All Blacks pre-match HAKA really is a white-hot testosterone moment), and at the same time question unthinking macho attitudes.
They also take full advantage of the sheer theatrical fun to be had from the kind of show where a rugby scrum transforms instantly into a bed in the local maternity unit, or a pair of full-backs on the run into a living-room sofa.
It might be impossible to criticise Alone it Stands for letting the society it describes off too lightly - there's a lot about conviviality, comradeship, and cheerful social egalitarianism, not so much about poverty, prejudice and rampant sexism. But overall, Breen's script makes a powerful affectionate sweep across the spectrum of Limerick life on that great day 22 years ago. Only a heart of stone could fail to respond to the sheer energy and joie de vivre of this company, as they conjure up the All Blacks and the Munster players, the kids in the street and the fans in the crowd, in a show that is meant, above all, to celebrate a time and a place, and that does so not only with flair but with love.
The Scotsman
14 th August 2000 Catherine Lockerbie
Theatre in the pink with an All Black drama
Game, set and hard to match
Alone it Stands
Sometimes, you just need a dose of joy; and there is a fine hefty dose of at the heart of this celebratory work.
The subtitle explains the source of that joy: Munster 12 - All Blacks 0.
One of the more extraordinary rugby matches of recent times, a real one in which a part-time bunch of Irish amateurs defeated the mightiest team in the world, is re-created in the confined space of the Traverse, a small miracle of choreography and humanity.
Those of us who find rugby and its rituals nothing less than risible "grown men biting ears and shoving each other into the mud - can still thrill to this work , encapsulating as it does the triumph of the underdog, a topic dear to Scottish hearts.
John Breen, writer and director (and on this occasion, actor too) set himself a formidable task: take a dramatic event of which the outcome is already known, devoid therefore of dramatic tension, and create a gripping work of theatre from it. He builds on the stories of the time, the growth of the folk myth, his own bonfire-building memories, and he does it with blithe cheerfulness and easy humour. The cast of 6 give whole-hearted, committed performances, conjuring up 62 characters - among them the fearsome Haka-performing All Blacks themselves.
Human stories surround the scrum: the wife giving birth, the father dying. With great economy and imagination, key scenes from the match, the great day itself, are conjured before our eyes. It is not the tightest or most probing script in the world and in the great carnival of the Fringe there will be better, more astonishing movement.
However, Alone it Stands has been a great hit in Ireland and audiences here should now bring the same generosity and joy to the work which it in turn offers to them.
The Stage Magazine
( Edinburgh ) Duska Radosavijevic Heaney
Alone it Stands
Five actors, one actress - 62 characters on an empty set; and it works for every minute of it. The play written and directed by the award winning Irish director John Breen - marks the 22 nd anniversary of Limerick rugby club's historic victory against the invincible New Zealand All Blacks.
Whether or not you are a rugby fan, The Yew Tree and Island 's Theatre Company's collaboration is bound to enchant you.
It is a highly stylised show which utilises the dynamics and ecstasy of a sporting event to reconcile the realms of popular entertainment and high art aesthetics.
Underlying political issues are apparent too, but skilfully sidelined for potential after-show contemplation.
Swift cuts from a stadium's dressing rooms, to a children's playground, to a maternity hospital have an almost filmic quality, yet they are only made possible by Breen's extraordinary understanding of the unique potential of theatre - especially when it comes to the internal worlds of the plays numerous characters.
The use of ritualised chanting and extremely demanding choreography also place physical theatre tradition firmly in the domain of the mainstream.
It all seems so effortless and thanks to an excellent cast and precise lighting design,
all the more poetic and exceptional.
The Mercury
( Tasmania ) 2 nd April 2000 Richard Bladel
Warm hearted winner is a must see
Alone it Stands
If you are counting your pennies and can afford but one trip to main-stage theatre during this fabulous festival, make it to this warm underdog-wins-out physical romp full of laughter, insight and tremendous skill.
If you are not a regular theatregoer, go along, you'll have a night to remember and you might even become a theatre lover for life.
This theatre company from the westerly edge of Ireland brings us the stories of many characters who lived through a great moment in Irish history when "even the earthworms were barracking for Munster " as their amateur provincial rugby team beat the almighty, all conquering New Zealand All Blacks.
Writer and director John Breen creates a thoroughly compelling world through a complex interweaving of story lines which could easily become confusing were it not for the consummate craft of his writing and directing and the thrilling expertise of his cast.
This really is an example of getting the tremendously challenging balance between these elements just right.
The actors are a delight as they create 62 characters from post to poor, as well as cars, dogs and rugby balls as we are gifted with insights into these often difficult lives with a lightness of touch, warmth and wit that always energises its audience.
As they say in the brochure" you don't need to know much about rugby to enjoy it," but, by show's end, you know a hell of lot more about theatre. Oh, and about life too.
The Independent on Sunday
6 th Jan. 2002 Kate Bassett
Alone it Stands
Duchess- London
A Labrador puppy with a rugby ball in his furry little mouth gazes beseechingly from hoardings outside the Duchess. This is to promote, no, not toilet paper, but the first West End show to open in 2002. I regard this as an inauspicious start since I'm neither a pooch-fancier nor a rugger-lover. To be fair, the tag line holds some appeal: "The day the underdog bit back." And for sure, Alone it Stands is an accessible and affable comedy from Ireland which re-enacts a miraculous victory of the David vs Goliath variety.
In 1978, the world's burliest rugby team - the New Zealand all Blacks - were pounding their way across the British Isles , beating everyone. Only in backwater Limerick , the unfancied lads of Munster jogged on to the pitch and defeated the Kiwis.
With a final score of 12-0, the small-timers became legends.
This show, in itself, is a little guys' success story. Written and directed by John Breen for a Co Mayo troupe called Yew Tree , Alone it Stands was initially performed in a handful of rugby clubs. The it landed warm reviews on the Edinburgh Fringe and now it's scored big time - picked up by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful theatres group which was, of course, behind the maestro's Ulster soccer musical, The Beautiful Game.
Breen's staging is simple, with a gym mat representing the field and Munster 's modest skyline for a backdrop. His cast of six - including one sturdy actress Niamh McGrath - are game for a laugh, juggling half-a-dozen roles each. Neat choreography means the All Blacks' preliminary Maori stomp stomp melds into a scrum, and awesome sprints are mimicked in slow motion with amusingly strained faces.
The actors supply the commentary as they pass the imaginary ball, and glimpses of the wider communal picture are interwoven. Our sporting heroes morph into jostling fans - with one pessimist harping on Ireland 's history of losing military battles, McGrath is also lifted above the men to portray one of the player's wives, struggling through childbirth without her man by her side.
Really though, Breen only superficially grapples with Irish socio-political worries.
Mild laughs rule the day. This is hardly breathtakingly
original physical theatre either.
Alone it Stands echoes John Godber's Up 'n' Under, with less verbal vibrancy. As some of the role-swapping is fuzzy, it also seems a poor cousin of Stones in his Pockets, the recent West End hit by Ireland 's Marie Jones. Dire attempts at Kiwi accents and corny impersonations of kids and pets don't help. This show looks like stop-gap programming to me
Hello Magazine
22nd Jan 2002
Alone it Stands
Duchess Theatre- London Bill Hagerty
Big men with high shoulders and crooked noses edged their way into stall seats on opening night, looking about as much at home as ballet dancers in an abattoir.
A play about rugby football had dragged them away from more usual social environments, such as pubs where pints can be consumed or raucous dinners where trousers are removed and rude songs sung. Plays about sport are rare and the subject will, I predict deter many potential customers to whom all games are anathema. But if it can attract sports fans whose only previous brush with the theatre is having the appendix or tonsils out, it will be a winner. And that's what the Irish provincial team, Munster , were over the mighty All Blacks on Halloween in 1978.
Perhaps the All Blacks should have offered Munster a treat, but instead were shown a trick or two and slumped to a 0-12 defeat.
Breen who also directs celebrates one of the biggest upsets in the history of the game by tracing the events of that day in Limerick , both on and off the pitch. There's no set, no props apart from the occasional forward, and a cast of six - five men and a woman - who play around 60 different roles. It's a play of two halves, the first act ending with Munster hardly believing what's happening as they break for half-an-orange and a few Hail Marys . The match itself is played out, mainly in slow motion. Meanwhile, local kids are trying to build the world's biggest bonfire and a father-to-be is sloping off to the game, even though his wife is about to deliver any moment. Many of the incidents are true, including the birth of twins and the death of Munster captain's father while listening to the radio commentary. The cast is wonderfully accomplished; switching accents easily as both the Irish and the New Zealanders, and earning applause for the scene when the last push to deliver two potential players into the world, coincides with the final heave that sees Munster victorious. Do catch it if you can - you could call it a scrumptious experience.
Posted by dennis at 06:41 PM July 24, 2005