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That wouldn’t be my kind of thing at all. But when a thing is local, you have to help out or you’ll never hear the end of it.
A modern retelling of Oklahoma. Of course. Everything has to be a modern retelling. The more I see of the modern world, the less business it has retelling anything. But I kept that to myself. We were at a thing in the school there last year for the grandchildren and in the plot, the fairy godmother was just Cinderella’s social media influencer friend. And she was doing all these dances on TikTok to raise money for a gofundme for her carriage. What happened to magic? That’s how we used to fix things before. I don’t like the real world interfering all the time. I’ve enough of the real world.
Local dramatics
If you want the real world though, there’s nothing like The Kilsudgeon Dramatic Society. Dramatic in every way. There’s always some sort of a row going on over people not being picked for parts and I know of at least two marriages that broke up over carry-on behind the scenes.
Anyway, there’s a
wan – Iseult Sweeney – who’s back from New York. She went off to do drama and apparently she was a dead body in Law and Order, but she’s home now working in her father’s garage and she’s taken on the drama. She’s after writing Oklahome Is Where the Heart Is. Loosely based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein she says.
In this one, there are songs like, The Farmer and the Hippy should be friends, The Civic with the Spoiler on Top, I Can Say No If I Want To (Consent Is Important).
The Tidy Towns got roped in to do the ushering and the back stage herding. And chaperoning as well. In Kilsudgeon Amateur Dramatics, there’s everyone aged from 10 to 80 in there so you have to make sure the youngsters aren’t getting sips out of cans lying around the place. And the SMOKING! I haven’t seen it as much since the Fleadh Cheoil. You’d be doing well to stay off the vapes before your Confirmation.
Five nights it was supposed to be on in the hall. I thought myself that was going to be ambitious and sure enough with a week to go, they said: “Due to circumstances beyond our control, we will have three performances.” The circumstances were the ticket sales and they couldn’t control how to get money out of people’s pockets.
On the three nights, my job was side of stage. A runner, it was called. Have you seen the shape of me? I’m no runner, but I’m looking athletic these days the way the rest of the parish is going.
Stepping up
One bit of Oklahoma they’ve kept is the auction where the village is trying to raise money for a schoolhouse.
I’m listening away to this anyway at the side of the stage on opening night and then there’s silence. And murmuring. I look out. The auction has ground to a halt. Ger Finneran is supposed to bid but the latchiko has forgotten his lines. And the auction can’t go on if no one bids. Well whatever notion took over, I said this can’t go on. Or rather, this has to go on. I pull on a bonnet, lean in and shout: “THE WAY INFLATION IS GOING, THEM HAMPERS ARE DIRT CHEAP?.”
That gets a laugh and Ger Finneran gets a whisper and he finally bids the five dollars.
Iseult comes up to me afterwards.
“Ann,” she says, “that was inspired. And everyone thought it was part of the show because inflation is such a hot button topic.”
“Yes, we can’t be turning our backs on what’s out there,” I said. “I was only bringing a bit of realism to the thing.”
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