'Pack up your troubles and smile, smile, smile': comic plays about the ...

COST 1 (1) pp. 43–59 Intellect Limited 2010

Comedy Studies Volume 1 Number 1 © 2010 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/cost.1.1.43/1

TIM MILES British Institute for Humour Research, University of Surrey

‘Pack up your troubles and smile, smile, smile’: comic plays about the legacy of ‘the Troubles’ ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

There have been several plays concerned with the history, and legacy, of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, produced since the ceasefires of 1994, that have chosen to portray events comically. The article will focus on five: A Night in November (1994) by Marie Jones; The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001) by Martin McDonagh; The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) (2002) by Martin Lynch, Connor Grimes and Alan McKee; and Caught Red-Handed (2002) by Tim Loane. The article has four main aims: firstly, to offer a brief analysis of the comedy of these plays; secondly, to argue that these plays offer audiences, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, an important, and often therapeutic, way of responding to ‘the Troubles’; thirdly, to argue that many critics have failed to realize the significance of some of these plays, in part as a result of their failure to appreciate the function of the comedy; and, finally, to argue that it is through an analysis of the comedy that insights may be gained as to why some of these plays have ‘travelled’ while others have played only to local audiences.

comedy theory Northern Ireland (the) Troubles Gary Mitchell Sigmund Freud Henri Bergson

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1. A copy of the Agree may be found on the official web site of the Northern Ireland Office: http://www.nio.gov. uk/agreement.pdf.

Laughter is not just an expression of emotion. It is a public symptom of engaging in a kind of conflict resolution. (Terrence Deacon quoted in Carr and Greeves 2006: 25) In his essay in Stepping Stones: The Arts in Ulster, 1971–2001 (2001), David Grant commented on ‘the obvious equation between the eruption of violence and the decline of theatre in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s’ (Carruthers and Douds 2001: 27) claiming ‘the Troubles’ helped accelerate what was an ‘already inexorable trend’ (Carruthers and Douds 2001: 27). He goes on to say that, despite this, in 1975, the Lyric, Northern Ireland’s principle producing house, ‘enjoyed what remains its greatest ever box office success’ (Carruthers and Douds 2001: 32) with a production of Patrick Galvin’s We do it for Love. The play dealt directly with ‘the Troubles’ in a comic manner. Grant comments on how ‘outsiders’ were ‘aghast at the uproarious response to jokes aimed directly at the violence’ (Carruthers and Douds 2001: 32). ‘The Troubles’ seemingly reached a close, firstly with the ceasefires of 1994, and then with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement), which saw the peoples of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland vote in favour of greater cooperation. The agreement was supported by all the major political parties, on both sides of the border, with the notable exception of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, and included a commitment to ‘exclusively peaceful and democratic means’.1 Following the key events of 1994 and 1998, several comedies concerned with the history, and legacy, of ‘the Troubles’ have been staged in Belfast, Dublin, London and elsewhere. This article will focus on four of them: A Night in November (1994) by Marie Jones; The Lieutenant of Innishmore (2001) by Martin McDonough; The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) (2002) by Martin Lynch, Connor Grimes and Alan McKee; and Caught Red-Handed (2002) by Tim Loane. In doing so, I have four main aims: firstly, to offer a brief analysis of the comedy of these plays; secondly, to argue that some of these plays offer audiences, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, an important, and often therapeutic, way of responding to ‘the Troubles’; thirdly, to argue that some critics have failed to realize the significance of some of these plays as a result of their failure to appreciate the plays’ comedy; and, finally, and most importantly, to argue that different approaches to comedy may be useful, and indeed necessary, in analysing comedy in different cultural contexts. Indeed comedy is highly contextual, to the extent that seemingly competing theories of comedy may be applicable to an understanding of the similar subject matters comically treated – especially if they are performed in significantly different contexts. In so doing, insights may be gained as to why some of these comedies have ‘travelled’, while others have played only to local audiences. Three categories dominate humour theory, and have done so for some time: theories of superiority, of relief, and of incongruity; a classification almost universally accepted in recent literature. Critchley in On Humour (2002), Billig in Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (2005), and Carr and Greeves in The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden meaning of Jokes (2006), for example, all adopt this classification. What connects all these theories is that they are all based in reception: they focus on what comedy does to its audience. My aim here is not to evaluate the many theories of comedy, or offer some sort of overview of comedy theory, and I use the terms ‘superiority’, ‘relief’, and ‘incongruity’ to broadly identify diverse

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‘Pack up your troubles and smile, smile, smile’

bodies of ideas. Instead, I aim to problematize the relationship between comedy and cultural context. Double pointed out in his Ph.D. thesis, ‘An Approach to Tradition of British Stand-up Comedy’, the link between incongruity comedy and context: [incongruity comedy] implies an intrinsic link between the joke and its cultural context; humorous incongruity involves deviation from the normal and the expected, and ideas of what constitutes abnormality or unexpectedness will differ from culture to culture. (Double 1991:1) Northern Ireland presents an interesting example in this context, in terms of what audiences may regard as ‘abnormality or unexpectedness’, for the paradox is that despite ‘the Troubles’ being widely reported, those cultural representations that exist outside of Ulster have often been seen as stereotypical. Linda Anderson, for example, was quoted in The Guardian in 2005 as referring to Northern Ireland as ‘one of the most over-narrativised areas of the world’ (Kennedy 2005), with writers reinforcing clichés and stereotypes about the causes of violence. In Ulster Loyalism and the British Media (1998), Parkinson makes a cogent case that the British press was unprepared to cover ‘the Troubles’ when they started, and that the British media often presented Unionism in an unfair and inaccurate manner. It is true that many feature films, about Northern Ireland, released since 1994 have portayed Protestants unsympathetically (Resurrection Man, for example), or Catholics as victims (In the Name of the Father and Some Mother’s Son, for instance). Moreover, such films will usually focus on the ‘Troubles’ and not other aspects of Northern Irish life. Maguire, in his book Making Theatre in Northern Ireland (2006) suggests ‘… as I am writing, media images of street riots across Belfast reinforce around the world the sense of over three decades of undifferentiated violence. “Northern Ireland” and “The Troubles” have become synonymous’ (Maguire 2006: 1). Those who live in Northern Ireland are, of course, more likely to be aware of the complexities behind the clichés, and what may seem incongruous to an audience at London’s Tricycle theatre may be quite different from that which seems so to an audience at the Whiterock theatre just off the Falls Road in Belfast. I also want to focus on the performative nature of the comedy. When we watch a ‘serious’ play we may not know if our fellow audience members are enjoying it. In a comedy, we can see, and hear, them laugh, and if they are doing so at the same time as us, we can recognize a mutual experience, a common sense of relief, or a common pleasure in an attack on those we enjoy seeing ridiculed. Audience members may look at each other, more likely than during a tragedy, seeking confirmation of shared pleasure. Humour may be seen as ‘the oil of our social encounters’ (Carr and Greeves 2006: 5), and a ‘group bonding exercise’ (Carr and Greeves 2006: 6). It involves an act of mutual consent, itself acting as a metaphor for the Good Friday Agreement whereby any constitutional change to the status of Northern Ireland could only come about with the consent of the majority of its citizens.

A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER A Night in November was first produced at Whiterock theatre, in Belfast, in August 1994, amid the tensions of the recently established ceasefires, before transferring to the Tricycle theatre in London in March 1995, where it was

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considered sufficiently successful to be brought back in July 2002. Marie Jones’ play has had a number of other productions, in England, Eire, and elsewhere, most recently at the Trafalgar Studios in London where it opened in October 2007, with the Northern Irish stand-up comedian, Patrick Kielty, playing all the parts. The play is a monodrama, requiring only one actor to perform over thirty characters, all seen through the eyes of a central character, Kenneth. He is an embittered Belfast Protestant dole clerk, who initially relishes his petty victimization of unemployed Catholics, and resents his Catholic boss, Jerry, who will ‘never be one of us’ (Jones 2000: 68). However, when Kenneth attends the November 1993 World Cup football qualifier between Northern Ireland and Eire, he is appalled when some of the Northern Irish supporters start to chant ‘trick or treat’, this being a reference to the real events, the previous month, when seven people were shot dead in the Rising Sun pub in Greysteel by members of the Protestant paramilitary group the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force): … it’s beyond words, it’s beyond feeling … I’m numb … Greysteel seven Ireland nil … trick or treat … men walk into a pub on Halloween, shout Trick or Treat, and mow down seven innocent people and these fuckin’ barbarians are laughin’ … surely to God, surely to Christ these are not the people I am part of … no, it’s not, don’t tell me, I’m not hearing them, I’m not for I can’t fucking handle it … (Jones 2000: 72–73) Disgusted also by his wife, and his father-in-law, who support the crowd, Kenneth decides to fly to the USA for the 1994 World Cup finals, to join ‘Jackie’s Army’. During the finals he finally accepts a new, all-embracing, Irish identity. Superiority comedy, or Schadenfreude, is the principal comic device in the first half of A Night in November. From the beginning we are invited to experience ‘some eminency’, in Hobbes words, in comparison with Kenneth’s petty self-importance, known even to his wife: That day started like every other day starts out … check under car for explosive devices … you have to keep one step ahead of the bastards … […] For dear sake Kenneth, who would want to blow you up? I am a government employee. You’re only a dole clerk Kenneth, will you catch yourself on. (Jones 2000: 63) Gary Mitchell has commented on what has often been seen as Protestant resistance to the arts and arts education. In his play, Remnants of Fear, for example, Charlie, a liberal who supports the peace process, argues with his hard line brother about the different attitudes between Loyalist and Republican prisoners, from the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) and the IRA (Irish Republican Army), respectively: The IRA young men were studying. They were actually bringing in lecturers from Queens. Professors. While they were doing that the UDA young men were marching in circles, playing snooker, lifting weights and doing drugs. (Mitchell, 2005: 130)

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Tim Loane, the former artistic director of the Lyric, and whose play Caught Red-Handed shall be considered later in this article, offered this explanation, suggesting that Belfast is: … a city built upon industry, upon nuts and bolts, ropes and steelworks. The psyche of the city, the psyche of the North of Ireland, is one that is about concrete things to do with certainty and belief and faith and unshakeable things […] so that psyche does not lend itself to creative writing, or creativity in many ways, because creativity is asking questions, raising doubts, saying that there is uncertainty and saying that there are things over and above concrete and steel that are important. (Loane, quoted in McDowell: 15 May 2005) In his radio play Stranded, Mitchell comments how Protestantism, despite its origins in the Reformation, had, in Northern Ireland, reached a position where intransigence overpowered any urge for change: There is no work now, that is what we have been told and we always believe what we are told, as long as it is Protestants telling us this … When was it that we first said ‘Ulster says no’? 1916? 1921? 1995? I don’t know. If a culture refuses to change, can it progress? Quakers – are they stranded in time? No TVs, no cars. Quakers say no? I don’t think so … I once believed in a Protestant country for a Protestant people but the man I worked for drove a German car, watched American films on his Japanese TV, while eating a Chinese meal. There’s something wrong here. Do Protestants make movies? Do Protestants make cars? If not, why not? Was it because someone said no and we all backed then up? I can’t remember, but I can remember saying ‘no’. No United Ireland, No Pope here, No surrender. No change. No, no, no, no! (transcribed by the author from audio recording: BBC Radio 3, 11 August 1995) In A Night in November, these problematic attitudes to change and questioning, are satirized when Kenneth, for example, is surprised when visiting the house of his Catholic boss, Jerry, to discover that his books are not ’in size order or colour’ but ‘look like they have been read’ (Jones 2000: 83); unlike Kenneth’s ‘burgundy leather bound classics … never opened, but they suit the bookcase, match the wallpaper, blend in with the carpet …’ (Jones 2000: 83). While this may appear to offer a form of social identity comedy, a form of incongruity, this would be a mistake, for this forms part of a series of events, at which we are invited to experience some sense of Hobbesian ‘eminency’: including Kenneth’s pettiness, his wife’s social climbing; his father-in-law’s casual, and wholly irrational, prejudice. We are offered no contextualization for Kenneth’s reaction, but, instead, encouraged to laugh at such ignorance, especially so perhaps as ‘we’ are in a theatre, demonstrating our cultural capital. Kenneth’s petty victories include joining the golf club from which Catholics are barred, much to the approval of his wife: ‘… tonight I am member of the golf club and at last she can up her status at aerobics’ (Jones 2000: 75) Similarly, the British military presence is belittled, but only

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through the voice of Jerry: ‘Look, this is bloody ridiculous, will you please come out from under my rhododendron bush, it is bright lilac and youse are dressed in khaki, did youse learn nothing about camouflage …’ (Jones 2000: 89). However, the narrative arc shows Kenneth’s growing self- awareness, and self-disgust, so the comedy of superiority shifts to him commenting on the ludicrous behaviour of others, not through the voice of Jerry, but as himself: Yes … it was like that when I was growing up … as soon as the news came on my ma reached for a brush … automatic reaction … don’t listen … just keep cleaning and everything will be alright … we have been protected by hoovers and brushes all our lives … (Jones 2000: 90) Kenneth’s growing anxiety and self-hatred reaches a climax: I wanted to scream, wanted to jump up on the counter with a thousand giros in my hands and throw them at the people … here, go on, take the money, take the money and spend it on whatever you like … I felt I was standing there for hours just fantasising what I could do if I wasn’t a stupid soul-less little prick … if it was even possible to change … was it … is it?’ (Jones 2000: 77) The relief theory of the comic, according to Carr and Greeves, is rooted in primeval survival instincts and ‘mirrors the leap from perceived threat to no threat’ (Carr and Greeves 2006: 23). It is, in fact, a sort of peace process. In the second half of the play it is relief comedy that dominates. Once Kenneth makes the decisions to leave Belfast, without telling his wife, to support the Republic of Ireland at the World Cup he is filled with exuberance, a child-like joy and happiness: ‘I was in that car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when it came to the edge of the cliff, it took wings … that was me’ (Jones 2000: 96). In America he enthusiastically joins in with singing ‘stick your pizza up your arse’ (Jones 2000: 106) following Ireland’s victory over the Italians; the viciousness of ‘trick or treat’ has been replaced by relatively good-natured rivalry. He musters the courage to tell another Irish supporter that he is a Protestant; ‘So am I’ (Jones 2000: 101) is the reply. Concern is proved to be unfounded, and Kenneth can relax, as do the audience, whose attention is centred on the lone performer. The play ends with Kenneth’s ecstatic affirmation of his new identity: ‘I am free of it, I am a free man … I am a Protestant Man. I’m an Irish Man’ (Jones 2000: 108). Given the fragile state of the peace process when A Night in November was first produced, there is little doubt that this was a brave and important play. The celebration of the Irish football team, at the time largely full of second or third generation emigrants based in England, represented an important reclaiming of the Irish diaspora. Moreover, by acknowledging Kenneth’s pain, and demonstrating the joy to be had in freeing oneself from bigotry, the play sent out an important message. However, its continuing success, especially with English audiences is problematic, in its simplistic depiction of both sides of the community: Kenneth’s Protestant wife and Ernie, his father-in-law, are deeply prejudice, the latter virulently so;

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whereas Catholic Jerry and the supporters of the Irish football team are kind and tolerant. The play asks us to see loyalism as a sort of ‘false consciousness’ (Maguire 2006: 155), as it does the British presence on the island of Ireland. Maguire also quotes Robin Greer’s review that the ‘implication is that hatred and intolerance is only [done] by the ugly and bloodthirsty barbarians of the Protestant community’ (Maguire 2006: 154). Characterization is conditioned by seeing everything through Kenneth’s eyes, and Maguire comments on the nature of monodrama, that it ‘draws the audience to the performer, and encourages them to subscribe to the control he exerts’ (Maguire 2006: 154 ). Parkinson in Ulster Unionism and the British Media (1998) comments on ‘Unionism’s failure to project its case’ (Parkinson 1998: 161) and of the British public’s ‘broad indifference to the political wishes of loyalists’ (Parkinson 1998: 161). This indifference is surely exacerbated by the comedy: the joy of experiencing Kenneth being finally ‘free of it’ (with its almost orgasmic climax reminding us of Freudian associations between humour and the libido); the relief that he has overcome his intense anxiety; and the pleasure at ridiculing bigotry and snobbery. The audience is encouraged to share what is a vastly simplistic view of cultural difference in Northern Ireland. Carr and Greeves cite an academic study about comedy leading to a possible lessening of critical engagement: A recent study by Professor Robin Dunbar found that laughter raised people’s pain thresholds. His explanation is that shared social laughter causes an endorphin rush and the release of oxytocin to the brain … Endorphins are natural opiates. They make us feel relaxed, encourage social and sexual interaction and increase our level of trust. (Carr and Greeves 2006: 22) So, we trust Kenneth and ultimately feel relaxed, and, of course, happy – this is, after all, a comedy – despite what is a troubling play that ignores important issues. These may be said to include: the diversity within Protestantism (Roman Catholicism is, and has been for a long time, the largest single faith group in Ulster, with the Protestant churches split into various denominations); and English historical culpability in fostering prejudice (phrases such as ‘no surrender’, used by Kenneth’s father-in-law, are there to be laughed at, with no awareness that this rallying call against the Home Rule movement was used, by English propagandists, to recruit Ulstermen during World War I for the killing fields of France). However, we have been encouraged to be relaxed and trusting and ignore such troubling problems. Michael Billig in Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (2005) stated that ‘The idea of a critical approach to humour sounds somewhat sinister. It suggests bossiness or craziness … [determining] what should and should not be laughed at’ (Billig 2005: 1). As a result, Billig claims that ‘common-sense assumptions’ (Billig 2005: 2, 5) are inherent in much discourse on the comic. The assumptions Billig highlights include the supposed benefits of comedy, saying, that there is ‘widespread positive evaluation of humour in today’s popular and academic psychology’ (Billig 2005: 5). Billig states that ‘only joking’ and ‘just kidding’ are among the most used phrases in the English language, as though comic discourse is subject to some lesser form of scrutiny. A Night in November is an example where comic success has perhaps not been wholly positive, but has been at the expense of important ideological, and cultural, complexity.

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THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE In April 2001, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced Martin McDonagh’s first play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore at The Other Place in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The play is set in 1993, while ‘the Troubles’ were still claiming many victims, and is set largely in Inishmore, an island of the west coast of Ireland in Galway bay. In the play, Donny accuses Davey of riding his bicycle into a black cat and killing the animal, despite Davey’s denials. This is worrying for them as the cat, ‘wee Thomas’, is the much-loved pet belonging to Padraic, Donny’s son and the self-proclaimed ‘lieutenant of Inishmore’: a man so violent and unstable, that he is regarded as ‘too mad’ for the INLA (the Irish National Liberation Army). The two men find a replacement cat, who is unfortunately ‘orange’, something they try and disguise with the liberal use of black shoe polish. Padraic returns, from torturing and bombing in ‘the north’ and is furious at the death of his cat, promising to kill Donny and Davey. Before he does this, three men appear, claiming they killed ‘wee Thomas’, in order to lure Padraic back to Inishmore where he is to be killed for murdering a ‘big man’ in the INLA. Before this new killing can take place, however, Mairead, Davey’s sister shoots the three men, as she appears infatuated with Padraic. She then shoots him too, however, so she can take over as the new lieutenant of Inishmore. Donny and Davey are left to consider such important matters as whether cats like to eat Frosties. What is perhaps most noticeable about the comedy of The Lieutenant of Inishmore is the variety of comic techniques used: including, comedy based in incongruity; absurdity and nonsense; shock and violence; physical comedy and slapstick, including ‘sight gags’; the grotesque; parody; dramatic irony and comic asides; and comedy based in relief and superiority. It is, in many ways, a remarkably accomplished piece of comic writing. Simon Critchley in On Humour defines the incongruity theory of comedy as when the ‘tacit social contract’ (Critchley 2002: 2) between teller and audience is violated. Characters have a curious attitude to animals: Padraic is apparently devoted to his cat, but is too busy to look after ‘wee Thomas‘ as he is ‘moving around the country bombing places’ (McDonagh 2003: 10); Padraic discusses animal welfare, toenails and digressions – ‘I have lost my train of thought, so I have’ (McDonagh 2003: 13) – with his torture victim; and Mairead shoots, and blinds, cows as a protest against the meat trade: ‘For who would want to buy a blind cow?’ (McDonagh 2003: 19). Characters also have curious attitudes towards each other: Mairead’s and Padraic’s romance is seemingly intense, until she suddenly shoots him; when Donny, Davey and Padraic all have guns pointing at their heads, there follows a discussion about the number of words in the phrase ‘splinter group’; much is made of Davey’s hairstyle despite the apparent gravity of the situation; and Donny, when asked if the murder of his son upsets him, seems surprised by the question: Davey: (pause) Are you sad, Donny? Donny: Sad, why? Davey: Sad them fellas are to be shooting your son’s head off him? Donny: No. After your son tries to execute you, your opinions do change about him. (McDonagh 2003: 41) Incongruity comedy forms an obvious link with absurdism and there is something Beckettian about the two clowns, Donny and Davey – the latter asking

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towards the end of the play: ‘Will it never end? Will it never fecking end?’ (McDonagh 2003: 54). As clowns, they take part in physical comedy as, for example, when ‘Donny steps back and kicks Davey up the arse’ (McDonagh 2003: 7), and, as clowns, they are quite incompetent, failing to wake up at a given time, despite agreeing that it is important that they do so. They also bicker, and blame one another for the situation in which they find themselves. In The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious, Freud claimed that comedy was the socially acceptable way of expressing what would otherwise be socially unacceptable. Much of the comedy in The Lieutenant of Inishmore lies with the violent and the grotesque, and this also bears an important relation to the comedy’s links with absurdism. The opening stage directions have a cat with ‘its head half missing’ (McDonagh 2003: 7) as ‘bits of its brains pop out’ (McDonagh 2003: 7). Later, the ‘blood-soaked living room is strewn with body parts’ (McDonagh 2003: 46), and even the ‘orange’ cat has a grotesque feel. Superiority comedy may be seen as feeling glad it is not us who is threatened with the violence of ‘mad Padraic’, and, in turn, we feel superior as he is the lieutenant ‘in his own brain if nowhere else’ (McDonagh 2003: 20), at least according to Donny. Similarly, we can laugh at Padraic and his desire to ‘splinter from a splinter group’ (McDonagh 2003: 16). However, we can also feel relief as nearly all the violence happens offstage, and when it looks likely to happen onstage it is immediately interrupted: ‘Padraic is just about to slice the nipple off [belonging to James, his torture victim] when the phone goes off’ (McDonagh 2003: 15). The Lieutenant of Inishmore perhaps offers a satire on Republican violence, but its targets are too broad, and with a focus on ‘cat battering’ any satirical edge is surely blunted. Unlike, A Night in November there seems to be no obvious recommendation of the benefits of peace, and no clear targets, ‘legitimate’ or otherwise. Nor is there any sort of understanding of ‘the Troubles’, Republican violence, or paramilitary factionalism; no awareness of the events that fuel Republican violence, e.g., Cromwellian genocide, the inflexible British adherence to economic liberalism that caused ‘the great emptying’ following the potato famine, or the effect of internment without trial. James sells marijuana, for which he is tortured by Padraic, but this is largely part of the comedy of violence; there is little understanding of the drug ‘turf wars’ that have arisen in Northern Ireland since the end of ‘the Troubles’ as dissident paramilitaries have moved into drug trafficking. The trivial and the serious are conflated. Joey, for example, one of the assassins, claims that there are ‘no guts involved in cat battering […] like something the British would do […] like on Bloody Sunday’ (McDonagh 2003: 26). He goes on to say: ‘Same as blowing up Airey Neave. You can’t blow up a fella just because he has a funny name. It wasn’t his fault’ (McDonagh 2003: 26–27). Similarly, Padraic condemns the Guildford Four: ‘Even if they didn’t do it, they should have taken the blame and been proud’ (McDonagh 2003: 30). All the characters are fools: Christy and Brendan, two of the assassins hoping to kill Padraic, hopelessly misquote Marx; Donny and Davey discuss the relative advantages of joining the INLA as opposed to the IRA, solely in terms of opportunities for travel. All of the characters are, in fact, little more than ‘thick Paddies’. In Beyond a Joke: the Limits of Humour (2005), Lockyer and Pickering comment that ‘comic meaning is also dependent on the settings and the

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contexts in which a joke is told … What is funny at one time is not funny at another’ (Lockyer and Pickering 2005: 9). The Lieutenant of Inishmore has had huge commercial, and critical, success, but mainly outside of the island of Ireland, winning many awards and having many productions in, for example, the United States. To an English, and more so, an American audience, where Irish Republican violence no longer has any significant impact, the undoubted comic skill of this play has attracted large audiences. In Northern Ireland matters are different. Ulster may be post-war but it is not post-conflict. At the time of writing, September 2009, a 600-pound bomb was made safe by the roadside in County Armagh; according to the BBC website: ‘It is suspected that dissident Republicans left the bomb.’ (BBC News 22 Sep 2009: ‘Dissident Republicans: threat to peace’). Sectarian violence, on some level, has continued throughout the peace process. Neil Jarman, in a report for the Institute for Conflict Research, published in 2005, entitled No Longer a Problem? Sectarian Violence in Northern Ireland, claimed that in Northern Ireland there was on average five attacks per month on churches, chapels, or Orange Halls between 1994 and 2005; that there were 376 riots in the interface zones of north Belfast over the same period; that the police recorded 294 ‘serious’ sectarian incidents between April 2001 and March 2004. At least seventeen barriers (peace walls) have been built, extended or heightened in Belfast since the ceasefires of 1994. Comedy also requires distance. The Lieutenant of Inishmore has never been produced in Northern Ireland.

THE HISTORY OF THE TROUBLES (ACCORDIN’ TO MY DA) The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) was ‘a major success’ (Maguire 2006: 26) in May 2002 as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast. Subsequently there was an Irish tour, three ‘sell-out’ runs at the Grand Opera House in Belfast, and a transfer to the Tricycle theatre in London in May 2003. The play is a comic romp through 33 years of ‘the Troubles’, between 1969 and 1992, covering key events, such as internment, the Anglo-Irish agreement, the death of Bobby Sands, the Brighton bomb, power sharing and the trials involving ‘super grasses’. The story is told through the eyes of Gerry, a working class Catholic, who struggles to survive ‘the Troubles’, with his friends, Fireball and Felix, and a wide array of minor characters. Identification between audience and performers is encouraged, not this time through monodrama (like in A Night in November), though there is considerable multi-rolling creating a similar effect, but also through direct address. There is superiority humour: the ineffectiveness and cruelty of the British government policy is attacked, with ‘internment without trial’ being referred to as ‘lock-em-up-for-fuck-all’ (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 17). While this may be seen as a form of incongruity, describing British government policy in vulgar terms, it forms part of a ridiculing of those who took part in, and were responsible for, the violence: ‘the street barricade’ (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 34) is referred to as ‘Belfast’s greatest architectural triumph’ (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 34); gunmen shoot themselves in the foot, metaphorically and literally, and we can feel superior to most of the participants engaged in the ‘war’. The play’s principle comic device, however, is relief. On many occasions the play sets up an expectation of seriousness, to dissolve the matter in humour – usually humour connected to sex, the body, or both. For example, at one point Gerry’s son thirteen-year-old son, Colm, talks to his father about the distress he feels about ‘the Troubles’:

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Colm: Adults like fightin’ over religion and politics … adults kill people over whether you’re Irish or British, and … and they blow people up in pubs … and shoot people at their doors in front of their families and other horrible things … Gerry: That might well be true. Colm: Adults are bad people. Gerry: Are they? Colm: They are daddy. I don’t want to be an adult when I grow up. Gerry: Y’don’t. Colm: I’d rather sit in my room, listen to Stiff Little Fingers, and masturbate all the time. (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 58) The play acknowledges the pain caused to Colm by the war, while, at the same time, suggesting he is like any other thirteen-year-old boy, in Belfast, London, or elsewhere, interested mainly in thoughts of sex and popular culture. While Bergson commented that emotion is the enemy of humour, the important point here is that the emotion is dissipated. The relief theory of comedy relies on surprise, but paradoxically it is reassuring. A similar ‘tension then release’ joke structure is repeated frequently throughout the play: for example, there is Gerry’s speech about the death of the Republican hunger striker, convicted murderer, and member of parliament, Bobby Sands: Gerry: Bobby Sands is dead. It was like a sledgehammer hittin’ my chest. I didn’t think he’d do it. I didn’t think it’d go to the end. I thought somebody, somehow, somewhere would step it. That woman … [Margaret Thatcher] … is truly, truly a bastard.’ Fade lights. Blasts out a song by The Jam. Gerry is kneeling on his bed – face down on all fours. He is about to have a haemorrhoids operation. (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 59) Pain is released by the humour of Gerry’s indignity. We may feel angry, as Gerry does, at Sands’ death, but will quickly be made to feel better at his expense. The play concerns itself with classic Freudian interests: birth (Gerry’s babies), sickness (Fireball works in a hospital), sex (Felix is obsessed by his wife’s breasts), and, above all else, survival. In acknowledging them, in using theatre to enact ‘the talking cure’, the prospect of health and sanity is offered. Towards the end of the play Gerry goes to a ‘post traumatic stress councillor’ (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 7). He needs therapy, and this is what this play offers its audience, through the repetition of the tension then release joke motif, and the triumph of the libido. Attending a performance is to attend a group massage session, a form of group therapy, for those who need it. The play ends with the Good Friday Agreement being signed, and with the sentimentality of Gerry, alone on stage, cradling his newly born grandson: Gerry: … You’re one big blank page, that’s what you are. But you’re the next page, our kid … You’re the next page. Gerry smiles at his grandchild as the lights fade to BLACKOUT. (Lynch, Grimes, McKee 2005: 69)

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Tim Miles

2. I know this because I was, at the time of this production, box office manager of the Tricycle theatre. The Tricycle has a substantial Irish audience and figures were about half what was expected by the theatre’s management.

Unlike A Night in November and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) was a dismal failure when it was performed in England. At the Tricycle, despite having the same cast as the Belfast production, it played to tiny audiences2 and was largely savaged by the critics. Their almost universal disappointment with the play was largely because they thought it was simply not funny. Lynn Gardner, writing in The Guardian claimed that ‘wit seems quite beyond Mr Lynch’ (Gardner, 2003), while Sarah Hemmings, in The Financial Times, called it a ‘feeble, coarse comedy’ (Hemmings, 2003). In The Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh referred to the writers as having ‘a warped sense of humour’, and called the play a ‘lumbering triviality’ (De Jongh, 2003), while John Peters, in his review for The Sunday Times, talked disparagingly about ‘pub humour’ (Peters, 2003). If A Night in November is a celebration of change, then The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) is a celebration of permanence, almost of the banal: of the triumph of the continuation of the ordinary. The term ‘normalization’ is used in Northern Ireland to represent the movement from ‘the Troubles’ to a society where its citizens’ concerns share more common ground with their neighbours in Ireland, and across the Irish Sea: job, home, family, and so on. Unlike The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the play acknowledges the pain and real events of ‘the Troubles’; and unlike A Night in November, the moral complexities of the conflict, for Gerry, and his friends, exist on the margins of the violence, both complicit and appalled by it. To an English audience in 2003, no longer fearful of Irish terrorism, with no direct experience of ‘the Troubles’, possibly bored of media and cultural representations of gunmen and barricades, there was no tension and release, no therapeutic value, and, as a result, no comedy. To a Belfast audience, in a city struggling towards ‘normalization’ this play is anything but a ‘triviality’. It is an important reinforcement of the possibility of the triumph of the ordinary: going to the pub, playing darts, having a family, but without the spectre of violence. It is curious that scholastic, as well as journalistic, criticism has not realized the significance of this play. While Maguire devotes significant attention to some of Lynch’s other plays in his otherwise excellent, and comprehensive book, Making Theatre in Northern Ireland (there are eight pages on The Interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty, for example) and significant sections on other ‘Troubles comedies’ (six pages on A Night in November, for example), The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) gets only a series of minor references, all in relation to memory or narrative technique. The play’s comedy is not mentioned, let alone its social significance analysed. This is especially curious given Maguire’s book is subtitled ‘through and beyond the Troubles’, for surely that is precisely what the play is offering its audience, through the comic device of tension and release.

CAUGHT RED-HANDED Caught Red-Handed was first performed in the Northern Bank Building, in Belfast, in February 2002. The play is set in what was then the future, in 2005. It is the eve of a referendum on a United Ireland, following an ‘ultimatum’ (Loane 2002: 14) by the American president (Hillary Clinton) to the British Prime Minister (Michael Portillo). The Paisley-like charismatic leader of the Alternative Unionist Party (AUP), itself a parody of the DUP,

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is simply know as ‘the Leader’ (giving him despotic associations). He has staked his reputation on stopping the vote, claiming that it is ‘undemocratic’ (Loane 2002: 15), that is until he suddenly dies, on the toilet. His ‘inner circle’ of supporters: Watson (a former paramilitary); McIlroy (a religious zealot); Wayne (the Leader’s son), and Wylie (the party’s spin doctor), are unsure what to do, until they see Pat, a Catholic bar steward, who is the spitting image of the Leader. They persuade Pat to impersonate the Leader until they have successfully disrupted the vote. Initially, Pat is reluctant, but he then becomes excited by the prospect of power, and the attentions of the Leader’s wife, Constance. However, a change of heart leads to him being almost assassinated by Watson, and Wayne takes over the leadership, only to surprise the other members of the ‘inner circle’ when he comes out as gay and embraces a liberal, progressive agenda. The play ends just before the result of the vote is announced, with the outcome in the balance. Caught Red-Handed is a satire, on Unionist politics, as well as a wider satire on Loyalist culture, and contemporary politics. Wylie is the party’s PR spokesman who, when estimating the turnout for those supporting the AUP claims: ‘Thirty thousand at least. Fifty for the press release’ (Loane 2002: 16). Watson, the macho former paramilitary thinks ‘re-thinking is a sign of weakness’ (Loane 2002: 16), reflecting Constance’s reluctance to drink tea, for doing so ‘seduces us to sit on the sofa and sort out our troubles’ (Loane 2002: 39). The play attacks political duplity and Loyalist infighting and violence. Indeed, David Trimble, when forced to resign as first minister claimed that his downfall had less to do with his failure to defeat the Republican parties, and more to do with his inability to work with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. Pat, once in the guise of the Leader, gets surprisingly enthusiastic about his role, at least initially, glorying in the empty phrases of political rhetoric: ‘I am not now and never have been a member of the Provisional Orange Order, so I cannot speak on their behalf.’ […] ‘Selling their children off and spreading their tentacles to infiltrate and control other countries as well as their own. That is the real Irish diaspora’ (Loane 2002: 40). Similarly to The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the play adopts a range of comic techniques, including those drawn from farce and slapstick. As with The History of the Troubles references to sex and bodily functions are common: the Leader is constipated (sufficiently so, it seems, to kill him), and, his replacement, Pat, would ‘love to go at Celine Dion’ (Loane 2002: 27). The farcical use of rapid entrances and exits is employed: ‘They [Wayne and Constance] hear someone coming, panic, then wheel him off quickly. The moment they disappear the opposite door flies open … (Loane 2002: 49). There is a neat sight gag, and theatrical joke, whereby the same actor who played the Leader reappears as Pat who ‘has a remarkable similarity to the Leader’ (Loane 2002: 21), and yet no one notices this for some time. The knowing bricolage of postmodern irony is seen when Wayne and Constance break into Stormont to the sound of ‘Mission Impossible type music’ (Loane 2002: 49), and fantastic cartoon images are evoked when Constance is described: ‘smoke comes out of her ears’ (Loane 2002: 36). The superiority comedy of anxiety is also seen when, for example, Pat repeatedly chastises himself for swearing: ‘Shite, I forgot (and again) Bollocks! (and again) Fuck!’ (Loane 2002: 28). Religion is also satirized. McIlroy has visions of the risen Christ, who informs the ‘inner circle’ that: ‘Now I have you, you orange bastards’ (Loane 2002: 24).

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Tim Miles

Religious moral hysteria is ridiculed when McIlroy is ‘histrionic’ (Loane 2002: 34) when Pat and Constance embrace: Pat beams and they leave arm-in-arm. Wayne is distraught and McIlroy histrionic. McIlroy: Ooohh, the storm clouds are gathering. The earth is preparing to mock our very existence. (Loane 2002: 34) However, beyond these comic ideas, Caught Red-Handed offers the prospect of the possibility of change within Unionist politics. The intolerance of the Leader is replaced by his son, whose final speeches incorporate Kenneth’s feeling of individual liberation from A Night in November, but also goes on to offer far wider prospects for change and a lasting peace: Yesterday I had a closet private life, a buried body, a transplanted father, and over-sexed mother and peace in NI to worry about. But I can see clearly now. And for the first time in my life I feel free. (Loane 2002: 54) There is another way for us. There has to be. I don’t exactly know what it is yet and I can’t pretend I have all the answers because I want to be up front with you. But I do know that I want us to find the way together. And if we lose the referendum we deal with it. It’s not the end of the world; it’s the new beginning of a new challenge… . (Loane 2002: 57) In his essay ‘Jokes and Joking: a Serious Laughing Matter’, Jonathon Miller claimed that: The value of humour may lie in the fact that it involves the rehearsal of alternative categories and classifications of the world in which we find ourselves. … [in comedy] we almost always have rehearsals, playings with and redesignings of the concepts by which we conduct ourselves during periods of seriousness. (Miller 1988: 13) The satire of the play points to all the ‘categories and classifications’ that have prevented Northern Ireland’s Unionist politics, at least within the Democratic Unionist Party, fully embracing the peace process: intransigence, intolerance, religious zealousness, fear of ‘the other’, and, in fact, fear of change. Commentators such as Susan McKay in Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People (2000) have commented on the fear, and negative self-definition of parts of the Loyalist community. The script of Caught Red-Handed includes a poem by James Simmons entitled ‘Ulster says Yes’, and in the play’s final scenes we see how this may happen: that Wayne can come out, and lead a grass-roots Unionist party offering tolerance; that McIlroy can abandon his religious judgementalism, finally acknowledging ‘How can something so beautiful be wrong?’ (Loane 2002: 56) when he sees Pat and Constance ‘passionately embrace’ (Loane 2002: 56); that Watson finally realizes that his ‘principles’, which he claimed he would never ‘sacrifice’ (Loane 2002: 57) are

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actually little more than an ‘obedient grunts’ (Loane 2002: 57); and that Wylie can acknowledge the power of honesty. Caught Red-Handed has never been produced outside of the island of Ireland. It may appear perhaps too schematic and idealistic to appeal to ‘outsiders’, with many specific cultural and historical references (to, for example, the 1973 strike that bought down the Sunningdale Agreement), yet the same could be said of A Night in November, with its sell-out run at London’s Tricycle. It is the play’s clear, culturally specific political targets that give it a context that prevents the humour from travelling unlike the personal (and therefore more accessible) targets in Marie Jones’ play. For the play to be funny (beyond the sex and shitting jokes, sight gags and farcical door slamming) requires an understanding of Unionist politics: again, context conditions comedy. Walter Ellis, writing in The Sunday Times in 1994 summed up what many Unionists regard as English attitudes towards them: The English are not touched by our devotion. Rather, they think that we ourselves are ‘touched’, Proper Paddies in fact. Vile is how they see us, just like the Boers, and when we pledge our loyalty, they shy away, embarrassed, as though we had just broken wind. (Ellis 1994: 32) Most English producers, and audiences, do not care enough about the Unionist experience to find humour in Loane’s targeted barbs.

CONCLUSION I have perhaps used comedy theory in an overly generalized way in my references to superiority, incongruity and relief, and there are undoubtedly many nuances, and complexities, that I have overlooked. Nevertheless, I hope that by trying to argue that comedy is culturally located, and potentially politically functional, that I may have made a contribution to a debate. Whether one is considering political comedy, notions of offensiveness and ethics in comedy, or some other aspect of the rich field of comedy studies, I am reminded of the importance of Bergson’s insistence that ‘… to understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is society, and above all we must determine the utility of its function, which is a social one’ (Bergson 1980: 65). A Night in November offered the peoples of Northern Ireland a character freeing himself of petty prejudice, but to an English audience perhaps helps reinforce certain stereotypes. The Lieutenant of Inishmore offers a rich comic tapestry but only to those who are sufficiently distanced from the reality of the events it describes. The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) acts as a therapy to those who have been close to the violence of ‘the Troubles’, but seems largely irrelevant, and unfunny, to those who have not. The comedy of Caught Red Handed is perhaps unable to transcend its specificity. Nevertheless, all these plays ask us to think about alternatives to violence and it is here that Bergson’s ‘utility’ lies.

REFERENCES Bergson, Henri (1980), On Laughter, Baltimore: John Hopkins University. Billig, Michael (2005), Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour, London: Sage.

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BBC News (2009), ‘Dissident Republicans: threat to peace’, 22 September, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/773157.stm. Accessed 24 September 2009. Carr, Jimmy and Greeves, Lucy (2006), The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden Meaning of Jokes, London: Penguin. Critchley, Simon (2002), On Humour, Abingdon: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund (1991), Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (ed. Angela Richards), Penguin Freud Library, Harmondsworth: Penguin. De Jongh, Nicholas, review of The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) in The Evening Standard. Theatre Record 21 May – 17 June 2003, P. 709. Double, O. (1991), ‘An Approach to the Traditions of British Stand-Up Comedy’, Ph.D. thesis, Sheffield: Sheffield University. Ellis, Walter (1994), The Sunday Times, 26 June 1994. Gardener, Lynn review of The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to my Da) in The Guardian. Theatre Record 21 May – 17 June 2003, P. 709. Griffiths, Trevor (1976), Comedians, London: Faber and Faber. Hemming, Sarah review of The History of the Troubbles (Accordin’ to my Da) in The Financial Times. Theatre Record 21 May – 17 June 2003, p. 709. Hobbes, Thomas (2003), Leviathan (eds Karl Schuhmann and G.A.J. Rogers), Bristol: Thoemmes. Jarman, Neil (2005), ‘No Longer a Problem? Sectarian Violence in Northern Ireland’, Institute for Conflict Research, http://www.community-relations.org.uk/consultation_uploads/OFMDFM_-_Sectarian_Violence.pdf. Accessed 5 May 2008. Jones, Marie (2000), Stones in His Pockets, also featuring A Night in November, London: Nick Hern. Kennedy, Maeve (2005), ‘The Troubles with Fictional Troubles’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jun/02/hayfestival2005.northernireland. Accessed 28 October 2009. Loane, Tim (2002), Caught Red Handed, Belfast: Tinderbox. Lockyer, Sharon, and Pickering, Michael (2005), ‘The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humour and Comedy’, in Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering (eds), Beyond a Joke: the Limits of Humour, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 3–17. Lynch, Martin, and Grimes, Connor and McKee, Alan (2005), The History of the Troubles (Accordin’ to My Da), Belfast: Lagan. McDonagh, Martin (2003), The Lieutenant of Inishmore, London: Dramatists Play Services Inc. McDowell, Wallace ‘Challenges and Reaffirmations in the Representation of the Ulster Protestant’. Irish Theatre in England, 15 May 2005, National Portrait Gallery, London. McKay, Susan (2000), Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, Belfast: Blackstaff. Maguire, Tom (2006), Making Theatre in Northern Ireland: Through and Beyond the Troubles, Exeter: University of Exeter. Miller, Jonathon (1988), ‘Jokes and Joking: A Serious Matter’, in John Durant and Jonathon Miller (ed.) (1988), Laughing Matters: A Serious Look at Humour, Harlow: Longman, pp. 5–16. Mitchell, Gary, Remnants of Fear (unpublished script). Mitchell, Gary, Stranded (unpublished radio script). Northern Ireland Office: The Good Friday Agreement. http://www.nio.gov. uk/agreement.pdf. Accessed 29 October 2009.

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Parkinson, Alan F. (1998), Ulster Loyalism and the British Media, Dublin: Four Court, Peters, John review of The History of the Troubbles (Accordin’ to my Da) in The Sunday Times. Theatre Record 21 May – 17 June 2003, p. 709. Stepping Stones: the Arts in Ulster 1971–2001 (2001), eds. Mark Carruthers and Stephen Dodds, Belfast: Blackstaff.

SUGGESTED CITATION Miles, T. (2010), ‘‘Pack up your troubles and smile, smile, smile’: comic plays about the legacy of ‘the Troubles”, Comedy Studies 1: 1, pp. 43–59, doi: 10.1386/cost.1.1.43/1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS Tim Miles is an Associate Lecturer, and Ph.D. student, at the University of Surrey and a member of the British Institute for Humour Research. He is on the steering committees for the British Institute for Humour and the Popular Performance Network, and on the editorial board of Comedy Studies. His PhD thesis is provisionally entitled ‘Discourses of offence in stand-up comedy’. In 2009 he was awarded, jointly with Dr Kevin McCarron, a PALATINE development award to research the teaching of stand-up comedy in UK Higher Education: the findings of which are due to be published in 2010. He has published on the work of the Belfast playwright, Gary Mitchell. Contact: The British Institute for Humour Research, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH. E-mail: [email protected]

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Journal of Screenwriting ISSN 1759-7137 (2 issues | Volume 1, 2010)

Aims and Scope Editors Hjaf[ahYd=\algj BaddF]de]k b&f]de]k8m]d&Y[&mc ;g%]\algjk

The journal explores the nature of writing for the screen image; this includes not only writing for film and television but also computer games and animation. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena.

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Call for Papers

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The journal invites contributions from researchers and screenwriters which discuss any aspect of the history, theory and practice of the screenplay. This may include articles concerned with film, television and computer games screenplays. Articles should be between 4000 and 7000 words in length.

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