You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl

Borrowing a little from Monty Python and a little from D'Unbelievables, it's hurling like you've never seen it before, writes BRIAN O'CONNELL

IT IS the first day of rehearsals of a new musical in Cork: The 'All Star' Warsis attempting to do for hurling what I, Keanoand Alone It Standsdid for soccer and rugby. As they wait for their director, Bryan Flynn, to arrive, a cast of a dozen or so actors (some still in their suits, having come from their regular nine-to-fives) sit around, talking theatre. Some do impersonations, greet cast members as they arrive and reminisce about the last production they worked on.

In one corner the show’s musical director, David Hayes, is plugging in his laptop and setting up a large keyboard. Minutes later Flynn arrives with a large box of scripts fresh from the printer. “The writer, Kevin McCormack, and I were still typing it at 1am this morning,” he says, before adding, “It’s the usual story: doesn’t matter if you have four years to get it ready, you write up to the wire.”

As the scripts are handed out, actors are told which roles to look out for. “You’re reading Davy Fitz,” Flynn tells one actor before asking the cast to gather in a semicircle in the middle of the floor for a pep talk.

“Tomorrow two weeks we open in front of 900 people at the Cork Opera House,” he says, “It is a short rehearsal, but hopefully that will give it intensity and energy. You’re not going to find Chekhov between the pages. This is Monty Python meets D’Unbelievables meets Kevin McCormack.”

McCormack, who also plays one of the lead roles, says the idea for a musical based on hurling came to him one evening during a gathering with family and friends. "The idea only came about last summer when I was hosting a barbecue for my father-in-law's 75th birthday. I was talking to a few people and they mentioned I Keanoand said somebody should put something together based on the GAA.

“By remarkable coincidence I got an e-mail from Bryan Flynn a fortnight later. We worked together several times, and he had this idea that it could be the right time to do a musical on the GAA. We met with two notebooks and two Biros and thrashed out a few ideas, and that was the start of it.”

McCormack and Flynn knew each other from their amateur-theatre days and have worked together on several pantos. Flynn came up through the amateur ranks and is now one of the most sought-after musical directors in the country, having built his reputation through close association with Cork Opera House. He also devised and worked on Michael Collins – A Musical Drama, and says that after that experience he was looking for something lighter. It struck him that the GAA was largely virgin territory for the all-singing, all-dancing brigade and a year on from that e-mail to McCormack the duo are about to put their production on the stage.

“The plot involves a few central characters,” says McCormack, “and one is Hugh Cullen. He has been captain of Bog Rovers Junior B hurling team, from Ballygobackwards. He is no great shakes as a hurler but very passionate and the type of fella who goes training on a Sunday morning for a match on Tuesday night. He gets knocked out during a game, and Obi Wan Camogie comes to him in a dream and tells him he has to go into the future, 1,000 years from now, where King Henry of the Shefflin order is on the verge of winning 1,000 All-Ireland victories in a row.”

The 'All Star' Wars, so named, presumably, because Catswas already taken, also features contributions from GAA stars and commentators, and parodies past and present members of the game. The blurb calls the show a production about "hurling, heroes and hang sandwiches". But how will the theatrical team face up to the challenge of depicting hurling action on the stage?

“We have a few hurling sequences to act out,” says Flynn. “It is tricky, as we have some fellas in the cast who never held a hurley in their life, and we’re trying to get them looking half convincing. The team they play for in the show are useless, thankfully.”

Back in the rehearsal room Flynn tells the cast to open page 58 of their scripts. “It’s in the key of G,” he says, “and we’re going to be ginger in this scene, as we’re all clones of Henry Shefflin.” The cast then begin to feel their way into the song, Cat Commandos, with Hayes conducting. After about three attempts they have the tempo and air of the song pretty much nailed, with some of the actors even beginning to act out how their character might deliver the song.

Hayes and Flynn go over some of the finer points, such as repeating key phrases or adding ornamentation at the end of a chorus.

“We’d all love to be able to rehearse it for a month, but we can only afford two weeks. I know most of the cast, so I knew they could come in and hit the ground running,” says Flynn. “I needed to know that, if I handed them a script on day one, by the middle of the first week they’d have it up on the floor. That’s just the reality of the economics of musical theatre at a time like this.”

The actors are enthusiastic participants, searching out any chance to extract comic effect from their lines. Some put on clipped English accents, others go for a more rural Waterford drawl, and between each take they joke and bond among themselves.

"It's like Men in Tights," says one actor.

“You mean men in shorts,” replies Flynn.

The 'All Star' Warsis at Cork Opera House from Tuesday until next Sunday; corkoperahouse.ie

Give it a hurl: Shows that have brought GAA to the stage

Bondi Beach Boy Blue, written by Benny McDonald and focusing on the story of a young hurler from Kilkenny who is forced to emigrate, recently toured before a four-week run at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin.

Promoter Richie Ryan says he had high expectations for the show but “it just didn’t work. It would be a mistake to think a GAA audience is a theatre audience. My experience, having invited clubs from all over the country to our show, was that they are into going to matches more. GAA people are into GAA, and that is their outlet . . . We were hoping it would take off like Alone It Stands, but it didn’t, as we found out to our cost.”

The Cork writer Declan Hassettscored a commercial hit with his play Up the Rebelsa few years back. The show was a look at Cork's hurling triumphs since 1884 in a comical, musical manner. It drew full houses to Everyman Palace Theatre during its initial run, and returned for a second spell before touring the country.

“I think the GAA is so buried in the Irish psyche that it is so much part of what we are, and that is what sparked it off,” says Hassett.

Hassett, who is writing a play based on the life of the former taoiseach Jack Lynch, including his hurling career, says the key for anyone thinking about putting hurling on the stage is theatrical validation. “It has to work as a piece of theatre. If you forget that, then you can forget about making it a success.”