A man walks into a bar – we’ve all heard the old joke a thousand times. Only this time it’s been seven years, 122 days, 16 hours and 15 minutes since he last had a drink. He orders a frothy pint which is laid out enticingly before him. But will he drink it and slip off the wagon after all these years? Or will he resist and remain on the dry?

Declan Lynch’s acclaimed novel The Rooms chronicles one man’s long love affair with the bottle in a brutally direct, thought-provoking and at times, humorous way. The story now comes to life in Breaking Out, a new stage adaptation of the best-selling novel, directed by Michael James Ford, which has been playing to packed houses in recent weeks.
Presented as a monologue, the play is set in a pub where the protaganist tries to make some sense of his drinking years and their unresolved aftermath.
Neil, the piece's central character, is played brilliantly by Arthur Riordan, who manages to strike the right note between the seriousness of the subject matter at hand and the inevitable humour involved.
“It’s not what a lot of people might expect in a play about alcoholism,” he says, after another well-received performance in Greystones, County Wicklow. “What I really like about it is that it involves such a range of emotions. And I think it avoids a lot of those facile fairytales about drink that you get in a lot other treatments of the subject. The other thing I like about it is that I sort of half-acknowledge the audience which is a little strange.”
Riordan, a renowned stage actor, also appeared in Lynch’s previous play, Massive Damages. Bringing The Rooms to the stage was, he says, a challenge but one to be relished.
“What spurred Declan into adapting it for the stage in the first place was that he’d read excerpts from it at various public readings and it seemed to go down well. There was some re-writing and a few changes to the story but Declan, with his journalistic background, was able to re-shape it easily.”.
What sets this production apart from the usual one-man show format is a strong musical element, provided live on stage by musician (and journalist) Niall Toner.
Perched on a stool under a lone spotlight with his Fender Telecaster and a miniature Vox amp, Toner surreally picks and strums his way through original material as well as the songs of Hank Williams, Jackson Browne and Bob Seger. In addition to providing the soundtrack to the character’s life, the music adds an otherworldly dimension to the production in the same manner that a movie soundtrack informs key scenes.
“What it does for me in a way is free the narrative from the present tense,” offers Riordan. “All that reminiscing would be hard to take without some kind of reference point and music is the perfect way to do it. But it’s strange that, even though there are two of us onstage, he’s almost a ghostly figure, not quite there but almost acting as an alter ego to my own character.”
The subject matter of the demon drink is a familiar one to Irish audiences, yet it has rarely been confronted in such a direct, honest fashion. How has the audience reaction been thus far?
“Oh I don’t think any Irish person is entirely comfortable around the subject of alcohol,” he reflects. “There’s the denial thing for one. There’s that quote in Postcards From The Edge, ‘I’m not an alcoholic: I just drink like an Irish person’. I would say that a lot of people find it a little too close for comfort, although funnily enough, I’ve had a few coming up to me afterwards saying it puts a fierce thirst on you. The bar is usually quite busy afterwards, and a few people have even suggested we put it on in a pub so you’d never know (laughs).”