Stiff Resistance

Most people would say that being unable to get an erection is every man’s worst sexual nightmare. Actually, being unable to get an erection down can be even worse. A limp dick might be embarrassing, but a permanent horn can be fatal.

Such a stiff scenario is the premise of Galwegian writer Conor Montague’s Who Needs Enemies 2: Nightmare On Henry St – a new comic play about a priapism. Its publicity poster features the tagline, “What goes up, must come down!”
“The play revolves around erectile dysfunction, but it’s the opposite side: how do we get this damn thing down?” Montague explains. “It’s actually a common post-Viagra condition, especially if you take other drugs with it. In the play, they have to get his penis down before gangrene sets in and before he dies, essentially.”
Despite the ‘2’ in the title, this is actually the third instalment in what’s becoming a series of plays featuring the hapless character, Eoin Hancock, and his gang of degenerate, criminal friends.
The original Who Needs Enemies? was first staged almost two years ago, when NUIG ran an amateur drama competition. “I’m doing a PhD there at the moment,” Montague explains, “but I had just graduated from the MA in Writing at the time. I had lots of half-finished and half-baked ideas on my laptop. NUIG were holding a competition for the best one-act drama – with a time limit of 20 minutes – and I decided to give it a go.
“I adapted a short story I had written into a play about a guy who’s trying to give up drink and drugs and go straight after years of abuse. But his friends continuously drag him down. So it’s a play about destructive friendships and that particular lifestyle. And how to derive humour from his situation. He didn’t have the will or the means to escape from his friends.”
Together with some talented friends, including local stand-up comedian John Donnellan, Mongague wrote, produced and staged a one-act comedy. Although he had no previous acting experience, he starred in the play himself, playing a psychotic thug named Bottle (think Trainspotting’s Begbie’s Irish cousin).
“Looking back on it, it was very amateurish. None of us had ever acted before, I’d never written for theatre before. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we got some help from different people in Galway. The actor Rod Goodall, in particular, came in and gave us a hand with stage direction.”
They didn’t win the NUIG competition, but reaction to the short play was extremely positive. In that first audience was Roisin Dubh owner, and Galway Comedy Festival director, Kevin Healy, who immediately spotted its potential. He commissioned an extended hour-long version for the festival in 2010, which ultimately sold out its four-night run at the Town Hall studio. Such was its success that a specially rewritten Yuletide show – Who Needs Enemies: A Christmas Tale – was also commissioned, selling out the main theatre in December. A shorter version ran in Nun’s Island Theatre for six nights during the recent Galway Theatre Festival.
As Nightmare on Henry St begins, Eoin Hancock (played by Mark Dooley) has lost his sexual mojo following a traumatic experience in Amsterdam. His “friends” had placed a used condom in his ass while he was out comatose from drugs, leading him to believe that he’d been raped by a transvestite. Unable to make love to his girlfriend, his relationship is rapidly heading for the rocks.
Feeling somewhat guilty about their deception, Bottle provides Hancock with a “shag-bag” – a sex kit containing ecstasy, cocaine and Viagra. After two days making up for lost time with his girlfriend, the dismayed Hancock realises that his erection just isn’t going away. At which point his “friends” call around...
Although medical help is sought, it’s a disaster. “Bottle – who’s dressed as the Incredible Hulk because he’s on the way to a party – calls a doctor whom he knows through selling him dope,” Montague explains. “The doctor arrives, and makes the very medically negligent suggestion of lancing it, which is the worst thing you can possibly do. Luckily before Hancock’s penis gets lanced, his girlfriend comes back and saves the day. It turns out that the doctor that my character has called actually has a PhD in Philosophy rather than being a medical doctor. But to someone like Bottle, a doctor is a doctor.”
With their themes of sex, drugs and lawbreaking, Montague’s comedies have proved controversial. The last run during the theatre festival provoked many outraged letters to the local press.
“Lots of people objected to me deriving comedy from the tragedy of addiction. Some people objected to what they would have seen as a glamorisation of drug use. Because we had what looked like cocaine on the poster, and the play was obviously about a bunch of degenerates, people took it out of context. But I love all that. When lots of people are objecting to your work, it shows you’re on the right track.”

Who Needs Enemies 2: Nightmare On Henry St runs in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, on Friday October 28, as part of the Bulmer’s Comedy Festival.