A musical of two halves

Mix Roy Keane, Mick McCarthy, a World Cup spat, throw in a couple of togas and bit of Après Match, and what have you got? Brian…

Mix Roy Keane, Mick McCarthy, a World Cup spat, throw in a couple of togas and bit of Après Match, and what have you got? Brian Boyd on Saipan - the musical

'To save everyone the trouble of wondering what it's going to be like," says Arthur Mathews, co-writer of I, Keano, the upcoming musical with the tagline "He Came, He Saw, He Went Home", "it's a mix of King Lear, Après Match, Oklahoma and Gaels of Laughter." So it will be a high concept, Hornbyesque tragi-comedy working on a similar, but yet thematically different semiotic level to Jerry Springer: The Opera, and dealing in aspects of the post-Eoin Hand socio-sporting cultural landscape? "I can neither confirm nor deny that," says Mathews - enigmatically.

In a very spooky coincidence, I, Keano opens the night before the Republic of Ireland take on Portugal in a friendly at Lansdowne Road. Needless to say, the squad is already on the guest list if they fancy reacquainting themselves with the tumultuous events at the pre-World Cup training camp in 2002, when Roy Keane had an "open and frank" exchange with then manager Mick McCarthy.

"What first attracted me to writing a musical about what happened in Saipan was the fact that everyone had an opinion about what had happened," says Mathews. "It wasn't just football fans, it was the entire country. This divided the nation. You had 75-year-old women who had never been to a football match ringing up Marian Finucane and Joe Duffy to talk about it. It was incredible".

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Michael Nugent, the co-writer of the musical, notes: "Roy Keane and what happened in Saipan had a huge impact outside football. Back in the 1970s, football was just football, then with the Charlton era it became a national phenomenon thanks to appearances in World Cups. When the team stopped qualifying though, that faded away a bit but it came right back with the Roy Keane incident."

I, Keano is set in ancient Roman times. An ancient federation sends a legion to an island to prepare for an important war. Keano, their greatest warrior, a perfectionist with a fierce temper, comes up against his colleague, MaCartacus, an earnest but stubborn general who is aided by Quinnus, who "builds children's hospitals and gets PR advice from his wife, Surfia".

The drama begins when Keano finds that the battleground is too hard and that the troops are partying too much. Keano is torn between the conflicting advice of the Scottish dolphin God, Fergie, and the tap-dancing wood nymph, Dunphia. Three scribes inform the citizens back home of the progress of the war: the embedded Obsequius, the bearded Mischevus and the pleading Tommy Gormanus.

The music and lyrics are by Paul Woodfull - the talented and versatile musician/comic who, along with Mathews, brought us The Joshua Trio, the spoof U2 tribute band, and currently performs as Ding Dong Denny O'Reilly. Taking the role of Keano is Mario Rosenstock, from Today FM's Gift Grub fame. Playing the other characters are Risteard Cooper and Gary Cooke from Aprés Match; Tara Flynn, Dessie Gallagher and Malachy McKenna.

It's all directed by Peter Sheridan.

Mathews, co-writer of Father Ted, and Nugent, author of the recently published, Absurdly Yours - a series of daft letters to famous people and their real replies - both have a mild-to-troubling obsession with the national soccer team and both have a finely-tuned sense of rigorous humour.

It would be fair to say that the events of Saipan occupied a very large part of their attention. For operational reasons, they refuse to reveal which side they took during the great Keane/McCarthy divide.

"As regards the show being a re-run of the events of Saipan, I think people who go to see it will pick up on the bits they agree with and ignore the bits they disagree with," says Nugent. "It will most probably be the case that they will come out of the theatre feeling the same way about Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy and what happened as they did when they came in."

SO WE'RE NOT going to get the "Synge riots" again with people reacting to the action being played out in front of them? "I don't think so," says Nugent. "If anyone is to blame for what happened, it's the FAI, who, to my eyes, are like a constantly exploding clown's car."

It should be duly noted that Nugent is "bitter and twisted" about the FAI. We can exclusively reveal that in 1986, he applied for the job of the Irish football team manager only to be defeated by Jack Charlton. This is despite the fact that his CV boasted the fact that he had managed a local Dublin under-11 soccer side.

"The reason it's set in ancient Roman times," says Mathews, "is that the story has all the ingredients of an ancient tragedy. Already some people have said: 'What's the point of that?, but we're hoping the setting works. It's an unlikely scenario, but then so was Springtime For Hitler in The Producers. There are musicals on everything now, and almost an actual genre of 'the silly musical'. With this though, all the characters portrayed on stage had actual parts in the real Saipan drama. The only part we've played up is that of Surfia - Niall Quinn's wife."

FOR SUCH A "silly musical", the decision to open in Dublin's Olympia is a brave one. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this," says Mathews. "Originally it had just a cast of six - there's about 15 now - and it was much more of a 'fringey' type show. It just got out of control. It's now an Andrews Lane Theatre Production and depending on how it goes in the Olympia, it can go anywhere - I'd like to bring it to Manchester . . . and Cork".

Any word from Roy Keane's "people" about how he views it? "We've heard nothing at all from Manchester United," says Mathews. "What we do know is that Mario Rosenstock, who plays him, has been doing him on Today FM for the past few years and that Roy gets the tapes of the programme sent over to him."

Both Mathews and Nugent are adamant that they didn't write I, Keano just to make the musical format more accessible to football fans. "I think theatre is a very boring art form," says Mathews. "Some of the most boring experiences I've ever had have been in the theatre. I want this to have more of a Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat feel about it".

And on that cultural bombshell . . .

I, Keano opens in The Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Tuesday February 8th. Previews from February 2nd