Druid’s Cavalcaders is on song in a sure-fire touring success

Garrett Lombard and Amelia Crowley in 'The Cavalcaders', directed by Aaron Monaghan. Picture by Emilija Jefremova

Emer O'Kelly

May 29 2022 02:30 AM

The Cavalcaders Mick Lally Theatre Galway, and touring

It was no random accident that the Abbey Theatre chose a revival of Billy Roche’s The Cavalcaders to re-open the theatre after spectacular refurbishment under Fiach Mac Conghail’s directorship. A tale of simple, emotionally gut-wrenching tragedy, it still manages to send an audience into the night with an overall feeling of well-being.

It’s also what used to be called “a well-made play” already becoming unfashionable and frequently derided when it premiered back in 1993 on the Peacock stage. And it has old-fashioned, singalong music.

Now the almost always sure-footed Garry ‘Druid' Hynes has chosen it for an early summer national tour, which began this week at the Mick Lally Theatre in Galway (it was she who originally commissioned it for the Abbey).

The Cavalcaders are an amateur barber shop quartet, enjoying popularity, even fame, in their native Wexford. Their centre is the shoe repair shop run by Terry, in a street of small businesses trying to stand the test of time.

Not the least of the tragedies of the play is the central scenario: a middle-aged Terry standing in his deserted shop as it is dismantled by another quartet member, Rory, who is about to turn it into a takeaway diner.

But as memories crowd in on the lonely figure, we learn of other, more personal and more terrible tragedies. Terry is not a nice man at his core, even allowing for the fact that life played him a dirty trick early on, and that he is his own worst enemy. As reminiscent self-pity threatens to overwhelm him, a cavalcade of small-town life crosses the stage.

His young wife ran away with his best friend, except not very far, and he has had to see her almost daily in her new domesticity. So he consoled himself with the much younger Nuala.

She is besotted and infatuated despite the hole-and-corner nature of their non-relationship, carried on behind the locked doors of the darkened shop. Already Terry has lost Breda, the hairdresser from across the street who may love him, but is not prepared for a shameful unacknowledged affair. Hence Nuala. This is more damp squib than romantic roundabout.

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Then there’s Josie, already dead as Terry reminisces in the empty shop. Josie was gentle, kind, almost innocent. Certainly innocent where women were concerned, and destined in those long ago days “to die wondering” as the cancer ripped through him.

Ted was the pianist in the group, and he too played a part in Terry’s bitterness by refusing to defer to Terry’s rancid sense of entitlement.

The crisis comes when young Nuala decides to stand up for her right to dignity and recognition, triggering what is the central scene of the play, a terrifying tirade of rage and cruelty, so viscerally real that you shrink in your seat.

Terry shreds the girl, beginning with the splenetic “I’m only using you”. He feels nothing for her, and never will, never did. But Nuala has spirit of a kind, the kind of spirit born of despair.

Plot spoiler... now all these years later, she haunts the shop, not just in the sparkle of her girlhood obsession, but barefoot with dripping hair as she was pulled from the water under the bridge at Wexford.

And extraordinarily, as Roche writes him, we feel pity for Terry, and are inclined to rejoice at the ultimate salvation that the author gives him. It’s close to a fairy tale, but one set in the reality of people we recognise.

Aaron Monaghan does a fine job of direction, getting every ounce of passion from his actors, although a bit more emphasis between past and present would be welcome.

Garrett Lombard is an electrifying Terry, while Sean Kearns tears the heart out as the genial, gentle Josie (why don’t we see more of this lovely actor south of the border?). He also has a magnificent singing voice.

The cast is faultlessly completed by Amelia Crowley and Naoise Dunbar as Breda and Rory, Éilish McLaughlin as Nuala and Tiernan Messitt-Greene as Ted.

The atmospheric set is designed and perfectly lit by Ciaran Bagnall, and is impressively detailed for a touring production, with sound and composition by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, costumes by Clíodhna Hallissey, hair and make-up by Gráinne Coughlan and musical direction by Morgan Cooke.

The Cavalcaders will tour until July 2, taking in Sligo town, Longford town, Roscommon town, Limerick city, Tralee, Wexford town, Waterford city, Thurles, and the Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin.