?THIS COUNTRY is mad about compensation,? declares Declan Lynch, smiling the evil smile of a predatory Kings Inn pen-pusher. ?Compo culture. Everything requires compo. And what you might call the lower orders, what happens with them is that 14 members of the same family will fall down a manhole. What the professional classes do, however, is take libel actions. A lawsuit is their manhole.
?What?s going on in court is supposed to be specifically dealing with the truth. ?What is truth? What does this word mean?? Of course, if they get to the stage of what one word means, it?s open to interpretation ? so at that point, you?re just into a card game.
?The way it happens, the newspapers normally get done in by the juries, because of this fucking stereotype of the ?nefarious meeija?. Time after time, you?ll see senior counsel presenting a case on the basis that their client pulled himself up from the gutter to become king of the world, and everyone loved him. (portentously) And then, one day, it all went horribly wrong when this slander was printed in the . . . classified ads of the Leitrim Courier, or something (laughs).
?It?s just shite, like! It?s just bollocks! They?re only telling stories.?
Never in the history of the State has there been a worse time to be a journalist, nor a better time to be a barrister. Our newspapers and other media organs are hamstrung by a set of libel laws which make those of Stalin?s USSR look positively laissez-faire, and our hacks are too petrified to write a critical word against a luminary of any stripe for fear of a solicitor?s letter landing on their desks the next morning.
With any number of litigious robber-barons virtually queueing up for their day in court, there is no getting round the fact that the libel laws have done a better job of muzzling Ireland?s media than any amount of phone-taps and surveillance on journalists ever could. Pull the newspaper up on a spelling mistake, then watch the dim jury hand you a nest-egg for your retirement.
It is in this awful milieu that Declan Lynch has chosen to set his first theatrical production, the writing and rewriting of which has kept him away from the Foul Play desk for the past few months.
The affable Westmeathman is already well known to the public for his aforementioned Hot Press columns and his fine work for the Sunday Independent, as well as his two indispensable books They Are Of Ireland and Ireland On Three Million Pounds A Day, but should his latest endeavour achieve the repute and success it deserves, it is entirely possible that he may soon be able to refer to his ?many friends in the theatre world? without any aspersions being cast upon his sexual orientation.
The play is called Massive Damages, and it is all about libel. And money. And barristers. And showbands. And alcohol. And Sting.
It was earlier this year that Declan Lynch embarked in earnest upon the writing of his first play, encumbered only by the prospective baggage of the tag ?playwright?.
?One thing I?ve always been appalled by is journalists who announce that they?re gonna write plays or novels,? he explains. ?There were a few people I knew in journalism, who weren?t particularly good at it, but who were constantly demeaning it and saying that what they really wanted to do was go on and write plays and novels.
?The only reason they were saying this was because they wanted it on their CV. They just wanted to call themselves a novelist or a playwright. At dinner parties and that, if you?re introduced as a journalist, it sounds a bit low-rent. But if you call yourself a playwright, Jesus, you could be Eugene Ionesco, for all they know (laughs).
?I mean, I can hardly ever be found inside a theatre, in common with 99.95% of the world?s population. It would?ve been much more likely that I might have thought ?Oh, I?ll write a film? or something, just because I watch more films. But I wouldn?t know how to begin. I just took to doing this thing. It just seemed to feel like a play. I have no rational explanation, m?Lud. I can?t account for my actions (laughs). So it seemed that there was crack to be had, the way it was developing into basically a good yarn.?
The play revolves around two rather hapless characters, journalist Joe Jordan and washed-up alcoholic Brinsley Sheridan, a former showband singer whose past includes a stint with country ?n? Irish legends Humpy Kiernan & The Huguenots. Together, they hatch a dastardly clever plot. Joe will intentionally libel Brinsley, who will then take Joe?s newspaper to court and clean them out for thousands of pounds, and the pair will then split the damages. Except, of course, that more than one spanner is subsequently thrown into the works.
And the impulse at the heart of their quest for justice? Why, money for nothing, of course.
?If you?re libelled,? chuckles Declan, ?the day that it appears is supposed to be the worst day of your life. That?s what you have to go into court and say. You are a shadow of your former self. No-one talks to you any more, your children don?t want to know you, and you have gone to the bad, basically. Even if you happen to be running the country at that time.
?The main thing that fascinates me about it is some of the things that people have got money for. With the Sunday Indo, for example, we used to have to go along to libel seminars from time to time, run by the company?s solicitors, to refresh people about the sort of things that people sue for. Because by definition, most things that people get damages for are little oversights. I mean, most journalists are vigilant enough. You?d be fairly careful. It?s the little things that you get caught on, like something you had a mental block on, or that you phrased wrongly.?
What, then, in essence, is at the root of the play?
?The whole idea of convenient fictions,? answers Declan. ?Y?know, the kind of plots which people agree on, in order to make money or get out of a fix. Convenient fictions are the lawyers? raisons d?jtre. They are born to this stuff, because they?re so good at articulating bullshit concepts and greasy avenues of escape. They come out with all this shite like ?We want to do a job of justice? or ?Everyone?s entitled to a defence?, when in fact they like doing it because they?re greedy fuckers.
?I mean, everyone likes money for nothing. That?s the human impulse at the base of it, really. (sarcastically) Although I?m not suggesting for one minute that all libel actions are mischievous. Far from it! Very far from it! And I wouldn?t like to give anyone that impression! (laughs)?
So, have you ever attended a libel trial for pleasure, in your time?
?Ah no, you just read about ?em in the papers,? he says. ?Although I would?ve made a little collection of the great ones in my head over the years. There are all these essential madnesses about it which are fascinating.
?It?s great to get hold of transcripts of these things. People read them so avidly because they are theatrical, they are adversarial. Everyone there?s playing for these huge stakes, and there?s this ever-present sense that it?s all got completely out of hand. From this . . . germ, wherever it came from, suddenly everybody?s involved in this $100m lunacy that nobody can get out of at a certain stage because no-one shouted stop. And the clock is running and you?ve got the fucking world?s media sitting around having a laugh.
?The idea is that this person was held up to public ridicule, by something that most people probably didn?t read. And now, not only is it repeated in every paper in the country, but everything else he ever did is brought in. Things he?d forgotten he?d done.?
Was there the temptation to stir in elements of real-life causes celebre, little vignettes from famous lawsuits of bygone eras? Did any one-liners take their inspiration from remembrance of trials past?
?I?m not really making much up in this play, because it wouldn?t work. The weird thing is that there?s stuff you can?t put into plays, because people wouldn?t believe it ? but these events have happened in the High Court, no problem.
?That?s actually your basic problem in this kind of area. There?s stuff that people have got money for, which no-one in their right mind would believe if I put it into the play. They?d go, ?Ah, they could have thought of something better. Sure, no-one would give you #50,000 for that, for Jaysus? sake. Come off it.? You wouldn?t do it in a play ? but it can happen.?
The field of theatre, far more so than that of music, is notori-
ous for its own obscurely byzantine conventions, rules and rituals, many of which appear almost expressly designed to deter the riff-raff from showing any interest in it. This is a state of affairs which Declan Lynch fell foul of on several occasions during the creation of Massive Damages.
?At one point,? he admits, ?I kinda felt, ?I don?t know what I?m doing. Do you put Act I, Scene II at the top of the page here?? I think life is full of conspiracies to keep people away from things, journalism being one of them.
?Like, people often come up to me on the street (laughs), and say ?Hey! How do I get into journalism?? There are about 40 different ways of getting into journalism, but the bottom line is that no editor in the world is going to throw out a good article. You can go to every institute from Rathmines to Dar Es Salaam, but ultimately there are editors in every town and city with their tongues hanging out for a half-decent article. And if you can furnish them with same (laughs), you?ll probably be all right.?
Do you think that this sort of elitist obduracy serves only to throttle the genre in question, rather than strengthening it?
?Big-time. Every form of professional activity cloaks itself in mischief and arcane rules and all that sort of thing. In terms of theatre, you hear people on the radio or something, or an article they might contribute to a paper, and you learn afterwards that this is the funniest playwright in Ireland that you just heard or read there. And you think ?He can?t be! That guy can?t be funny! There?s just no fucking way he can be funny! Can?t happen!? Now, he might be funny on certain terms, but I don?t regard him as funny. He?s un-funny. It?s almost as though there are better writers around than these guys, but no-one will tell them how to do it (laughs). They get put off.?
Happily, Declan found assistance in the shape of director Gerry Stembridge (whose CV includes Guiltrip, The Gay Policeman and, of course, Scrap Saturday) and Paul Mercier?s Passion Machine company, for whom he has nothing but disgustingly nice words.
?My experiences with this have been nothing but excellent,? he grins. ?I kinda knew Gerry and Paul anyway, and I knew they were very good and easy to deal with. And the actors are fucking terrific. It?s been hugely educational, apart from anything else. The things you find out, like what works. Loads of jokes ended up on the cutting-room floor, like Ditch having a thing about the genius of Oliver Cromwell. But you can?t hold onto jokes like they?re personal friends of yours. I don?t mind making cuts as long as they work. Fuck it.?
Did you suffer endless agonies during the previews of the play, waiting with bated breath to see whether the audiences would laugh at particular lines or not?
?Oh Jesus, yes. It?s very difficult doing a comedy, very dicey. Because after you?ve rehearsed something 20 times, you?ve forgotten it?s funny. You don?t know if it?s funny any more. So it?s fascinating to see an actor turn a line a particular way and thereby make it 100 times funnier. It?s amazing and it?s also very scary, because you know that if you just did a bit more work here and there, you could make it so much funnier.?
The nature of its genesis aside, Massive Damages was a relatively quick and painless affair to actually sit down and write, according to Declan.
?The initial splurge was in my mind, where I wrote it in a weekend,? he says. ?But of course, it was much more than that initial kick-off. I wrote a lot fairly quickly. . . maybe over a few weekends.
?At first it was a bit of crack in my spare time. But I was actually enjoying myself, and I did think this subject was fascinating, because there are different things in the play. There?s the showbusiness thing, and the drink thing, and the law and the media. In this way, we can wind them all together quite happily. So because of my interest in these things, I found it good crack to do.
?I couldn?t imagine doing it because I had to ? it was merely because I had this stuff on the fucking brain. To paraphrase Phil Lynott, I sat down one day and it all flowed out of me. So hopefully now we?ve got it as tight as . . . a camel?s arse in a sandstorm.?
Massive Damages is populated with not so much cracked actors as cracked characters. Several are so deranged that you wouldn?t let them play with a crayon if you could help it, while others seem to have sprung fully-formed from the pages of a Flann O?Brien novel or a late-period Syd Barrett lyric sheet.
But perhaps the outstanding part in a play full of them is that of the nauseatingly oleaginous barrister Turlough Peavoy, a man seemingly on leave from his post as treasurer of the Young PDs Association, who makes incessant speeches about the quality of his wine cellar and generally comes on like the most punchable bastard in Christendom. Magnificently played by Jonathan White, it is probably his voice above all others, which will echo in your head when you leave the theatre.
?That character is a complete fucker,? smirks Declan. ?He?s an utter scum-bunny. No redeeming features at all. Actors, on the whole, would prefer to play the likeable character, but Jonathan is absolutely brilliant playing Peavoy. He was adding in little things to the part, like, instead of ?A haircut?, Jonathan would say ?An haircut?.
?Oddly enough, when I was writing it, that was the character I could hear most clearly. Even the rhythms of his speech, I had them very clearly in my head. I knew what he sounded like. I know who Peavoy is, absolutely, and maybe that?s why he came across like that. Otherwise, none of them is based on anyone in particular. But he is, clearly.?
His opposite number on the other side?s legal team is Marcus Aurelius Ditch, an older barrister (again played to perfection by Terry Byrne) who has forgotten more about corruption, deceit and palm-greasing than Peavoy will ever know.
?The part of Marcus Ditch is more rewarding, and more amusing, because he?s so far gone,? chortles Declan. ?He?s got a different sort of lunacy. He?s almost like a fucking sorcerer, whereas Turlough Peavoy is just a bollocks. Ditch is totally corrupt and deviant. You can visualise him driving around in the Phoenix Park at night. He?ll take what he can get. (laughs) Rough trade!?
The other characters in the play, although far less reptilian, are just as bizarre in their words and deeds. Take, for example, Victor Sugrue, the exquisitely demented newspaper editor to whom staff hack Joe Jordan is forced to justify himself. Sugrue ? played by veteran thespian Tom Hickey ? veers from utter madness to reasoned sanity and back again with an ease that would make the viewer shudder were this anything other than a comedy.
?I would think editing is the most appalling job in the world,? remarks Declan. ?It is just a truly dreadful, soul-destroying job. If you happen to be a good journalist yourself, and you?ve other people writing articles who aren?t really any good, then dealing with your own shit is one thing, but dealing with hundreds of other people?s shit, and then having to go down to the High Court and pay AN Other #100,000 for fucking nothing . . .
?I don?t think anyone in their right minds would want to edit a newspaper or magazine. Niall, as you know, is demonstrably insane . . . he quipped good-naturedly (laughs). So there really is no one person that Sugrue is based on, but there is this gene in all editors. Sugrue is not generic, but people will recognise bits of real people.?
Vincent Browne?
?It could be. But there are bits of everyone thrown in. He?s not really like Damien Kiberd, for example, but he might be. But that?s probably the wrong way to do it, getting someone in mind and just throwing them into the part. The characters must take on their own life. Eventually they have to start making sense on their own two legs.?
The showband subtext that I mentioned earlier manifests itself in the form of Brinsley Sheridan (played by Arthur Riordan), the down-at-heel singer who sees the libel action as (a) easy money, and (b) a chance to get back up in front of his adoring public again.
Why pick a showband guy as the protagonist, though? Why not, say, a politician who?s lost his seat and wants to regain his former prominence?
?Because of all the many races of people associated with getting money for nothing,? explains Declan, ?showband types might be in the top 100. A lot of them are chancers, which helps in that line of work. Most would be from the country, and many people of that ilk are very into litigation. It?s a stroke thing. ? they like a good stroke. You could say that their whole career was a stroke. This Fianna Fail councillor, Michael ?The Stroke? Fahy ? imagine the kind of strokery that went on for him to actually be named ?The Stroke? (laughs).
?I think they?re naturally funny. Of course there?s a sinister dimension to them, but . . . actually no, sinister isn?t the word. Demented, maybe. A lot of them have pretty terrible secrets and terrible lives. And pubic hair in mattresses and all that shite. But they have front, as well. You see some of these guys and they?re aged 65, but they?re kinda preserved or something. A waxy sheen.
?They?re just the sort of people who?d get involved in something like this ? it?s got plenty of attraction. Loads of good reasons. They?re the kind of fuckers who?d enjoy their day in court. In this guy?s case, he?s all washed-up, so it?d be a chance to put himself in front of the public again, and maybe make a few bob! And record an album of Marty Robbins? Gunfighter Ballads! But basically, if you?re going to picture your ideal litigant, and have a few laughs at the same time, they?re the men.?
Brinsley is helped in his quest for a regained good name by Joe Jordan, the perennially unfortunate wretch who hatches the scam in the first place. Although good at his job and a hard worker, he has a past record of courting disaster (boom boom!) on the libel front.
?He?s got a long history of getting hammered in court,? affirms Declan. ?And a lot of them were just that he was the victim of chancers. He was also on the losing end of cases that he should have won, but the paper settled out of court instead.
?Again, there are bits of various journalists in there. There?s a journalist I know who?s actually unlucky in libel. He has been hit for millions over the years, mostly for unforced errors ? like a guy who had the same name as somebody else, that kind of thing. He?s not like Dunphy, who almost asks for it. It just seems to arrive at this guy?s door.?
For what reason?
?For the same reason as it happens to Joe,? he explains. ?Joe?s funny and smart ? but he?s fucked. More or less everything that he and Victor say in this play is correct. They?re right, but the world is set up wrong for them. And that?s where the comedy is, there. They know the score, they have it all sussed out, but they keep getting done, because of the dark forces around them. In their world, they rule supreme. But the rest of the world doesn?t like their world any more, basically, and will hang them out to dry as much as possible. It?s a touching friendship, forged from catastrophe in the High Court (laughs).?
Massive Damages also contains a curious running joke in the form of Brinsley?s hero-worship of Sting, to whom he pays unabashed homage all through the proceedings, with repeated airings of ?Fields Of Gold? being the order of the day.
?I chose Sting as Brinsley?s role model,? explains Declan, ?because it would?ve been pointless picking someone who was obviously shite, like Daniel O?Donnell. That?s not funny. Equally, you couldn?t pick someone demonstrably brilliant like John Coltrane. I wanted someone ambiguous enough.
?So, for Brinsley, a guy who was in a pop-type showband, not C?n?W, Sting would be the man. He?d be everything they aspire to, apart from having all the money and the palace in the country. They?d see him as a paragon of excellence. Although another way of looking at it is that he?s naff. But there?s an ambiguity, not like sticking Foster & Allen in there. There?s a point to it.
?It also works on the level of some people thinking ?Brinsley likes Sting ? sure, Sting is great!?. He?s the right choice for it, definitely. I mean, I think he?s atrocious, but I can see that he can do things like sing properly and put together fairly sensible pop songs with a beginning, a middle and an end. Whereas someone like Phil Collins is just fucking reprehensible.?
Declan Lynch readily admits that his biggest fear with regard to the staging of Massive Damages is not that the actors might fluff their lines, or that a lighting gantry might fall down upon Turlough Peavoy, but simply whether or not the audience will laugh at the jokes.
?When we were doing the previews,? he recalls, ?there was always the thing of varying responses. People were laughing at different things on different days. But what?s good is, if they laugh at 40 things on one day and 40 other things the second day, what you find out is that there are 80 things that can be laughed at in this play. If we do it right. If.?
Does the thought of your cast ?dying? onstage overshadow everything else?
?Well, comedy, I think, is the most frightening,? he muses. ?If you?ve written some fucking tragedy, whether it?s great or godawful, people are going to be quiet during it. But if it?s a comedy and you?re not getting an audience response, you?re dead. The judgment is swift and merciless (laughs). Yes, there?ll be great distribution of the brown trousers.?
On opening night, or on all nights?
?Every waking moment!? n
? Declan Lynch?s Massive Damages begins a three-week run at Dublin?s Tivoli Theatre on October 13. It also plays at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick (Oct 6-12), the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny (Nov 3-9), the Cork Opera House (Nov 10-16), the Hawkswell Theatre, Sligo (Nov 17-23), and the Townhall Theatre, Galway (Nov 24-30).