James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ is a text that poor students of literature are frequently subjected to at university – I can unfortunately attest to being a victim of this 1000 page monstrosity.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a text that poor students of literature are frequently subjected to at university – I can unfortunately attest to being a victim of this 1000 page monstrosity. Boy, that Joyce is one intense Irishman! But if you can understand what the hell it is he’s saying, he’s also pretty funny. Possibly a generalisation, but so far this is something I can say about most Irish creatives – intense, confusing and funny. Mark O’Rowe is yet another example. Let’s put his 1999 play Howie The Rookie to the test and see if it supports the theory.
Firstly, in Howie The Rookie, Howie is not the Rookie. Bing! Confusion has already set in and we haven’t even got past the title. Tim Ross, one of the actors in Red Stitch’s version of the play soon to hit the stage, agrees. Then he explains:
"Yeah I know it is a bit confusing. It’s kind of like a mishmash of the two characters. There’s one character called the Howie Lee and then there’s the character I play called the Rookie Lee. So they’re not related but they have the same surname, which is Lee. One’s Howie and one’s Rookie and [O’Rowe]’s kind of combined the two names for the title for some reason."
Okay, now that we’ve got confusing under the belt, let’s head on over to funny. As Tim mentioned before, he plays the Rookie (who, let’s not forget, is not Howie).
"Howie and all the others think that I’ve infested one of their mates with scabies so they come chasing after me but then it turns out that I didn’t infest them – I got them off someone else. My character finds himself in all these desperate situations and a lot of the time it’s not his fault."
See? Scabies are funny. But the humour in this production seems to be heavily intertwined in the intensity. The play is harsh and violent. "It’s a very physical piece. The way we deliver the text, it’s not really natural at all. It’s very over the top with big strong moves when we describe what’s happening. It’s quite violent when it’s describing the fight scenes – really powerful stuff to listen to. I love if it (a play) makes you laugh and cry. That’s what I think this is. It’s a dream for me, this play really.
A lot of it is kind of directed at the audience – like we eyeball them when we deliver a lot of the lines."
Nobody can possibly tell me that eyeballing isn’t funny, albeit a little disconcerting.
So basically I think I’ve proved my point about Irishmen. To clarify though, I am not purporting that the trifecta of intensity, confusion and humour is at all negative and Howie sounds like a darn good piece of performance. Proof of this is the reception the production received when it was first staged by Red Stitch In 2002 (under Greg Carroll, who is also directing the current Howie). Its success is the reason why on Red Stitch’s ten year anniversary, they’ve decided to bring it back. "Never in the past have they put on the same show twice but they wanted to bring back one of the plays that everyone loved and so this was that one."
The play is performed in two 45 minute-long segments. "It’s just me and another guy called Paul Ashcroft. There’s no interaction between us. It’s almost like a one man show. Paul does a monologue out to the audience and then there’ll be an intermission and then I come on and do the next 45. That’s the funny thing. I haven’t even seen Paul since we did the initial first read about three weeks ago so it’s quite weird."
Civilians like us may get uncomfortable at the thought of having to be alone on stage for nearly an hour, and eyeballing the audience at that. Professional actors like Ross are pretty cool about it – as long as they get to hide behind a character.
"I’m not a huge fan of playing myself, like when you do a role on Neighbours [Tim Ross was in Neighbours] it has to be very natural and they always say, ‘Just be yourself.’ I really like getting into a character and just stepping out of my life and into someone else’s.
The season of Howie The Rookie starts on Wednesday March 16 and will go until Thursday March 17. It’ll be performed at the Red Stitch Actors Theatre on Chapel Street in St Kilda. If you’re ready to laugh your pants off whilst getting eyeballed, head to redstitch.net for more details.
