View from the Green Room: ’Dear Lord, I want to get laid at the Spring Show!’
Seamus O'Rourke in John B. Keane's The Love Hungry Farmer
John B. Keane died more than two decades ago and Seamus O’Rourke’s travelling one-man show of Keane’s bitter-sweet tale of the loneliness of the 70-year-old farmer longing for a woman’s comfort is beautifully rendered by the Leitrim actor tonight on the Mall.
Nobody understood the psyche of the marginalised and isolated country dweller better than Keane and this one-man show, adapted from Keane’s ‘Letters of a love hungry farmer’, relates the sad and isolated tale of John Bosco McClane told in his own words on a cold wintry night in a world that has constantly rejected him.
And rejection is the cruellest of all emotions because it paralyses its victim with self-doubt and self-blame. Faced with a life of loneliness and depression, John Bosco’s circle of ‘friends’ manipulate his isolation and hurt for their own advantage and his comments are as bitter as raw garlic.
Alone in his cottage in 1950’s rural Kerry, gentleman farmer McClane recalls the narrative of his years and creates a lyrical carousel of colourful and hilarious characters who all play their part in his life. Matchmaker Richard Michael Richard O’Connor, known to all as Mickey Mac Dickey, sends him an array of female suitors – an ex-nun, a returned Yank with plenty of bucks and Susie Lipsy – all of whom disappoint. His desperation turns to prayer… "Dear Lord, I want to get laid at the Spring Show!"
McClane blames the "townies and the city-slickers" for "moving" on the local women and suggests castration as a punishment for interlopers. Sadly, however, he mostly blames himself.
His own romantic misadventures are a comic book of rejection. The girls who led him on for fun and laughed at him, the girls who waited for him to make a move and left in disgust – 'I didn’t know what to do’– the girl on the riverbank with her rosary beads concealed in her briefs who fled in terror when he initiated romance, all left him emotionally battered and bruised.
When he confesses to a knowing and worldly Fr Kimmerly his impure actions, the priest responds, "sure, how could you commit adultery here; who could you do it with?"
Kimmerly’s response is really Keane’s response to the loneliness and desperation of the bachelor farmers of Kerry… "this whole county is reeking of chastitution".
O’Rourke’s adaptation of the John B. Keane script is edgier, angrier and sharper than other adaptations I’ve seen of this play.
Seamus stands on the apron of the stage to tell his tale and his performance is powerful. Funny and apprehensive, trusting but blaming, innocent and ironically worldly-wise, O’Rourke powers through all the emotions with razor-sharp comments that are mixed with gauche innocence that seeks approval for his situation… "sure what could I do…you know like".
And the packed Theatre Royal audience never leaves his side. The poet Patrick Kavanagh also lamented this state of male virginity… "lost all the long hours of pleasure/all the women that love young men".
There’s a gradual shift from detached amusement through anger and rejection and, on, finally, to an overwhelming despair as the waxen moon that overhangs the entire production becomes his only companion.
Director Michael Scott knew Keane well and captures every nuance of the Listowel writer’s style of delivery of a language that is loaded with imagery and metaphor and wit.
Seamus O’Rourke’s spell-binding performance will win many hearts this summer.
