IT'S A DAD'S LIFE: ADAM BROPHYenjoys a weekend of star performances and double entendres
SATURDAY NIGHT we stayed over in the rellies, the home of the most celebrated cousins in any family’s history. Every visit is a high octane affair: four girls from 10 down, one trampoline, a bag of make-up, a puppy, dress-up clothes and not a shrinking violet in the house. Oxygen is competed for, airspace is power.
The sister-in-law has been bringing the house down with the local musical society in a high-kicking production of La Cage Aux Folles. They sold out two nights in a row, a first, but when we saw how much flesh was on display we understood why. Fortunately the kids, for we brought them along, missed most nuances, inferences and Finbarr Saunder's level double entendres and basked in the buzz of it all.
We didn’t all pour back into the celebrated star of local stage’s pad ’til after midnight, still flushed from the excitement of it all.
Half past twelve they go to sleep. The law of reason would suggest they should stay a snoozing for a good eight hours. But no, the shrieks ring out at 6.30 – let the games begin. After more than seven years of sleep deprivation the fact that weekends mean nothing to a child, except more time to run, still hurts.
Broken and aware that there will be no return to nod due to being in a strange bed, I slink down to join them. We load up on Coco Pops and watch Kung Fu Pandawhile singing the previous night's songs. It is seven on a Sunday morning.
La Cageis as camp as it gets without heading for Soho. Based on the premise that a bit of gay action, supplemented with a little light BDSM is shocking, what is most enlightening is the fact that all the so-called alternative practices fly way below kiddie radar.
They don’t care that the main couple are both men or that one of them spends most of his time dressed in Dorothy Perkins. They don’t bat an eye that “Hannah from Hamburg” is kitted out in leather and refuses to stop cracking a whip. We tell them she’s lost her horse. They nod sagely.
They dig the song and dance. So much so that they re-enact most of the chorus scenes.
Kung Fu Pandais allowed to finish, combining as it does eastern mysticism and the philosophy of Jack Black. Some sausages are eaten. Then they retire upstairs to prepare their show.
The younger doesn’t bother, she is dressing the puppy in a doll’s babygrow and can’t understand the fuss. As a result, the junior Cage has a cast of three.
Adults move wearily through Sunday detritus, drink strong coffee and pick at paper supplements. We wonder will we ever snooze til brunch again, rather than just capitulate and call it lunch. By 11 I’m on mid-afternoon nap, cosy by the fire, when we are summoned for the premier.
The theatre is the master bedroom. We are greeted by rouged pre-teens in white bathrobes who manage to sell us hand-made raffle tickets. They miss nothing. I wind up €2 lighter and the proud owner of my own packet of marshmallows.
The younger climbs on the bed alongside the rest of the audience with the puppy still enclosed in doll’s clothes. She instructs the actors not to start until she has changed her baby’s nappy. The dog, young as she is, already knows she has no way out and acquiesces almost without complaint to her public humiliation. The curtain rises.
I have been entrusted with the music, but my track listing is faulty, so the actors have to hop into the pit on a couple of occasions to check which tune they’re supposed to be accompanying. This does not distract them from their roles. They are quite happy to break mid-song to discuss the next move or the proper words of the chorus. Brother-in-law is berated for reading a motorbike magazine during the performance. The rest of us dare not shift our gaze.
Finally, a climax is reached. The final note held and released. The wave their boas and wink into the crowd. We whoop and cheer and shuffle downstairs to catch the rerun of the Grand Prix. They tidy the bedroom as requested, shake out hair but leave full make-up on.
The elder arrives into the living room, crawls onto my lap to lipstick and glitter me. I am too tired to object, much to the hilarity of the counter girl when I pick up a pizza later in the day. But for now the cousins go out to the trampoline and bounce. And bounce.