Sixty of the Keane clan arrive up from Kerry to enjoy the opening of Matchmake-Me Do!, a new play from the pen of John B. Keane. The author himself is here in "reasonably good health", with "no notion of departing these climes", along with his wife, Mary. During the performance they sit beside their daughter, Joanna Keane O'Flynn, a secondary-school teacher in Tralee, who is "the light of his eyes", according to one family member.
"While the whimsicality and the desire to write is still there, I don't have the energy I used to have. Illness is a great chastener," says John B. Keane on a sad note before the play begins. It's a comedy, he points out, because "the country at the present time is in need of a laugh". The new play has been adapted by director Terry Byrne from Keane's writing. The actor Maureen Toal, who toured with Frank Kelly some years ago in a two-hander that used the same source material, is here to see the new play with her sister, Eileen Smyth.
Up here at the Tivoli Theatre from Cahirciveen is accountant Liam O'Connor, a nephew of the great playwright, and his wife Anne O'Connor. The Schuster clan arrives next, headed up by John B's sister, Peggy Schuster, and her Czech husband John Schuster.
Listowel may be out in force but Edward Farrell, producer of the play, is an Athlone man, and so Mary O'Rourke TD, Minister for Public Enterprise, arrives just in time to represent Shannon-side. icheal O Faolain. She's there to hear John B. reminisce about the old days in Athlone when her hotelier father, Paddy Lenihan, and the visiting Kerry troupe would sing old Jacobite songs until 4 a.m.
John B. Keane is currently working on a book of Christmas stories, he says, and plans to write a comedy about Church Street, where he grew up in Listowel. "I'm plotting it at the moment."
So what's responsible for producing the great writing in north Kerry? Keane's son, Conor, sporting a fine head of black curls, who is here with his wife Marie and their son Jack (5) and daughter Maggie (9), says the reason is that area "was colonised by Elizabethans and that is the foundation of the English which is used in northern Kerry today".