The Scrabble crew went on an outing to the Abbey Theatre the other night. This might be the most middle-class thing I’ve ever written except for the fact that later in this column I will be discussing how to boil quail eggs, and that obviously takes the ultimate prize. It’s far from quail eggs I was reared but it’s been a lifelong struggle to prove my working-class credentials having grown up in Sandymount, in the heart of the D-Fourtress as my Northsider children often remind me in mocking tones.
Anyway, it was off to the Abbey in a limo for the Scrabble crew. (Only joking I cycled there on my new bike. I’m middle-class now.) We were all there for the opening night of the best play I have seen on an Irish stage in a very long time. The Cave by Kevin Barry is the bleakest of black comedies starring Aaron Monaghan, Judith Roddy and Tommy Tiernan.
I say “best play” but I see the Guardian only gave it three stars (the feckin’ eejits) and Donald Clarke (who I usually trust) only gave it four. I am no critic, only a mere punter, but it’s a full five stars from me and if I could give it a few extra I would. The Cave, directed superbly by Caitríona McLaughlin, is about the McRae brothers Archie and Bopper. They are two depressed, homeless, middle-aged, loquacious lads who are living in a cave on Zion Hill in Co Sligo. They are obsessed with an international soap star and her Irish boyfriend. Rural broadband being what it is, and Zion Hill being a dead zone, they don’t have much by way of wifi coverage and they mainly live on stuff they’ve stolen from the nearest Lidl. Also, a “ban garda” called Helen is on their case in a serious way.
I want to be entertained in the theatre. Properly entertained. I want to be moved. To tears. To laughter. And it doesn’t happen very often except when I am in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, where it’s mostly musicals, which have a higher hit rate for all round entertainment in my experience. But this play? Boys oh boys, this play is the thing. Barry’s way with words is a source of national pride and to hear his words thrown around the stage of our national theatre, from the mouths of such extraordinary performers, is exhilarating.
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The c-word is used a lot in The Cave. More times, perhaps, than it has ever been uttered on that storied Abbey stage. No need for calls to Liveline - because the oldest word for female genitals in the English language, though long mired in misogyny, has been somewhat reclaimed in recent years. For a start it’s no longer just a noun but an adjective, with The Oxford English Dictionary adding c**ty and c**tish to its pages in 2014. In some quarters, especially on the drag scene, it’s now the highest of compliments.
Playwright Barry’s use of the word is not always complimentary but is always rich in language terms. I managed to get a copy of the script and there are nine mentions of the c-word or c-word-based derivatives. Helen the garda says it first referring to the “c**ten Butlins sign”. Later she refers to “the c**tology” that goes on around the Sligo town below the hill. At another point Bopper is upset about a celebrity who he describes as only a “c**t from the grass o’ two cows outside Durrow in Co Offaly”. Helen then refers to the McRae brothers as “c**tologists”. Bopper another time talks about his one-time love of yoga, revealing that he was at the cat-and-cow pose “like a c**t on fire”, by which he means he was passionate about the pose.
In another scene, Helen bemoans the trajectory of her Garda career: “The c**ts took one look at me and they said, away!” Bopper is writing a country song: “Oh the Bopper he walked by night ... had his fill o’ the Sligo c**ts”. Later he discusses his fears, one of them being that he might die inside the Roscommon border “coz the c**ts wouldn’t throw a shovel o’dirt over you”. Bopper at another point tries to quieten Archie by saying: “Shut the f**k up you f**ken c**t ya!” And that’s all nine uses of the word in the best play I’ve seen at the Abbey since The Train for you now. Rest assured, there is an awful lot more to it than that. It made me laugh. And think. And, when I read the script, I cried. I can’t stop thinking about Archie and Bopper and Helen.
[ Curse words around the world have something in common (we swear)Opens in new window ]
A few days after the Abbey, the Scrabble crew cycled over to my house from the Southside, by Luke Kelly’s head, along our lovely Royal Canal Greenway, for the latest session of our tournament. There’s a lot of canape one-upmanship going on in these Scrabble evenings. A certain person has started serving quail eggs dipped in cumin salt so there was nothing for it but to have a go. A medium quail’s egg, it turns out, only needs three minutes to boil.
It turned out some other Scrabble club members, people with much stronger critic credentials, held different views on The Cave. They felt it trivialised mental health issues and lacked political edge. Someone said the audience laughed too much. At which point, as though Barry himself was giving his verdict on all that, one player revealed the C-bomb nestling innocently in his rack. It’s a valid Scrabble word.
