'Frankenstein needs underpants'

Mixing politicians, pop stars and popes with monsters, movies and music, the newly revamped National Wax Museum has finally achieved the right combination of cool and kitsch, writes ROSITA BOLAND

‘MICHAEL WAS to open the museum. We had it all worked out. He was going to come in the front and go out the back.” The Michael whom Paddy Dunning, director of Dublin’s newly-opened National Wax Museum Plus, is talking about is Michael Jackson. We’re standing in what used to be the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, latterly a venue for poetry readings and book launches. The space is now occupied by images of popstars, rendered in wax and silicon.

There’s Madonna with bad fluffy hair and fingerless gloves, the spit of a sulky 1980s teenager. There’s Boy George in a flowered kaftan, for some reason sitting on the floor, looking slightly confused. There’s Joe Dolan, in blinding white. There’s Philo, looking just like his statue on Harry Street. But there’s no image – yet – of the world’s most famous dead popstar, who stayed for four months with Dunning’s family at Grouse Lodge, their recording studio in the midlands, and who apparently was due to open the museum.

The National Wax Museum closed five years ago, and since then, the figures have been hibernating in a warehouse in the docklands. The politicians, presidents, popes and athletes are now back on show again, in all their immobile glory, with glittering staring eyes, thatched hair and strangely glowing orange skin. Their charm is in their quirky out-of-focus oddness, and the fact that so many of these older figures bear so little resemblance to their real-life doubles.

Downstairs, in rooms that still have the bank’s original iron vault doors, there are some new exhibits. Some wag has moved the sign that says “Chamber of Horrors”, so it now directs people to the room where there is a tableaux of several politicians, in the process of signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

The absolute knock-out new exhibit is the quite fantastic Frankenstein’s Monster in the actual Chamber of Horrors. Laurent Mellet, a kinetic sculptor, has created a fabulously compelling piece, that sits up when sensors are triggered. The monster-like man’s heart pumps in a distant glass box, his eyes open, his ruined, carved-up body shakes convulsively and it’s all a great deal of fun. The really funny thing is that the monster looks more convincing as a half-dead man, parts of his body sewn up and gouged out, than does the figure of John Major in the adjoining room. At present, there is discussion going on with the sculptor as to whether the figure should be displayed naked or not.

“I wanted him totally naked,” Mellet states firmly. “But they’re getting nervous now.”

“We should put a pair of underpants on him,” James McDonald, the museum’s PR person, says insistently.

The horror theme continues in another room, where a muzzled Hannibal Lecter stares out from behind a cage, and something that looks quite dead hangs like a piece of washing from a hook. McDonald points out a nook at the back of the room. “That’s a great little space,” he declares cheerfully. “Look, there’s a load of cut-off hands in there.”

Elsewhere downstairs, there are new rooms that showcase the Celts and Christianity and folklore. There’s a high cross, part of a crannóg, Cuchulain about to whack his sliotar into the jaws of a wonderfully ferocious wolf beast, and Fionn mac Cumhaill with a salmon literally three times the size of himself. There’s also a metal horse, that looks more like the kind of public statue you see outdoors.

“That horse was very expensive all right. We’ll have Niamh Chinn Ór up there on his back soon,” McDonald explains. “She’s not there yet, because we still have to get her dressed.” We pass a pope without his head on the way upstairs. “It’ll take another week or so to sort everything out.”

The old museum got 175,000 visitors a year, and Dunning is hoping that it will now get numbers in the region of 350,000 every year. There have been some new additions to the museum, to make it more attractive to families and schools. Thus, the creation of some excellent science-themed rooms, with plenty of interactive features, including one not often seen: a model that you give a massive heart attack to, and then use a defibrillator on.

Reflecting the times we live in, there is a Wax Factor studio, which is a mix of karaoke and video, in which you can belt out the lyrics of various songs as you’re filmed and then download the results later. Dunning anticipates that this will be the most popular element to the museum. There’s also a recording studio, where you can mix tracks.

IN ANOTHER STUDIO, THERE are waxworks of “The Hall of Irish Legends”. Eamon Dunphy sits hunched in a chair, or it could be that he’s recoiling from the large figure right next to him, which is of a rotund Brendan Grace in a pair of schoolboy shorts. Gerry Ryan looks remarkably thin. There’s Gay Byrne, Noel Purcell and Maureen Potter, all lined up together, but no Pat Kenny or Ryan Tubridy. Not yet, anyway. “They’re all telling me I should do Tubridy,” says Dunning The plan is to add a figure every month or so, depending on who the public are interested in seeing in silicon form.

“We have the Taoiseach on order,” Dunning adds. “We must get a few new writers for the Writers’ Room too. What’s his name, that man, the poet – Heaney, that’s him. And we’ll do a Maeve Binchy too.”

One of the non-waxwork objects that came out of storage and has been reconditioned is the actual Popemobile Pope John Paul II used when he visited Ireland 30 years ago.

Dunning has put a new engine in it, and he has a most creative idea for it’s new use: part mobile advertising for the museum, and part social experiment.

“We’ll be sending out the Popemobile all over the country. It’s going to be in every town and village in Ireland. And everywhere we go, we’ll be asking people to nominate some person or child, some unsung member of the community,” he says. The chosen person will then get a spin in the Popemobile, through the streets of their homeplace. It’s a pity we’ll never see Michael Jackson in it.

DON'T MISS

Frankenstein’s Monster in the Chamber of Horrors

Phil Lynott – the best likeness

Madonna – the least recognisable waxwork

John Major, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern in the Anglo-Irish Agreement room

The Wax Factor karaoke area

The Popemobile as it travels the country