Creageivity
If you think you may be too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then CREAGEIVITY is the podcast for you. Hosted by artist / musician / writers Adrienne Thomas and Harlan Cockburn, each show brings illuminating and inspiring conversation with people who have kept on keeping on in their chosen field... or started some entirely new activity in later life.
Creageivity
Creageivity 40 - with Actor / Director / Academic Mick Greer
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Mick Greer graduated in English Literature from Cambridge University in 1983 and teaches at the School of Arts and Humanities at Lisbon University, where he is an Assistant Professor. He has a PhD on James Joyce and theatre, and is a researcher at the University’s Centre for Theatre Studies, where his main interests include James Joyce, Contemporary British and Irish Theatre, and Shakespeare in Performance.
In Creageivity 40 Mick shares his encyclopedic Joycean knowledge, and reads from the ending/beginning of Finnegan’s Wake. He also treats us to an unaccompanied song (a first for Creageivity) - The Parting Glass.
Mick is an active member of both the Lisbon Players and Já International Theatre, and is a founding member of the Dublin-based Balloonatics Theatre Company. He is also a voice-over artist, and appears in adverts, TV series and films.
A true raconteur, Mick Greer is a highly engaging teller of tales!
Intro Music: Celtic Winds by Psychronic - with thanks
Outro Music: The Parting Glass - traditional, performed by Mick Greer
Balloonatics website: https://balloonaticstheatre.com/
If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!
This is the Creative Podcast, episode forty.
SPEAKER_03Episode 40. Ooh, Adrienne, you're impressed by that. That's Adrienne, my partner in Creativity. I'm 50%, and Adrienne's the other 60% of this duo that presents Creativity. Hi Adrienne.
SPEAKER_00Hi, Harlan. How are you? You've gone Atlantic. I do, sometimes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Even though you're actually in Brighton, England.
SPEAKER_00I am in Brighton, England, on the south coast.
SPEAKER_03Right, well, hello, and I'm uh somewhere north of Budapest in Hungary. I was just about to say, if you think you're too old to be creative or too creative to feel old, then this is the podcast for you, or indeed for anyone who's interested in listening to fascinating people who've spent their lives full of creativity and are still doing it.
SPEAKER_00I absolutely agree. Oh, John. And we've had a huge series of really interesting people.
SPEAKER_03Well, we came in there with some very daunty Irish music, so obviously we must therefore be heading to um Lisbon, Portugal. Explain, please, Adrienne.
SPEAKER_00I think there's a real link between the Portuguese and the Irish, and it specifically applies to today's fabulous guest, Mick Greer, who I believe is Irish by birth. I'm not sure, we'll find out in a minute. He's certainly Irish by nature, and he lives in Lisbon with his wife, hundreds of grown-up children and animals. So, Mick, you graduated in English literature from Cambridge University in 1983, and you've been teaching at the School of Arts and Humanities at Lisbon University since 1992. Your main area of interest include James Joyce, contemporary British and Irish theatre, theatre in education, and Shakespeare in performance. Excuse me, I'll just put my teeth in.
SPEAKER_03Hello, Mick, by the way. We haven't met before, but hello. Can I call you Mick, or do we have to call you Professor?
SPEAKER_02Oh well, but really it should be Professor if you don't mind. No, no, no, no, no, Mick. People say professor, and I sort of turn around as if somebody else has come in the room. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03You are indeed Professor Greer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00This is an aspect of Mick that is quite new to me, anyway.
SPEAKER_02Most of my students don't realise either, don't worry.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Because you two know each other. Yes, we do. Because Mick, you're an active member of both the Lisbon Players and Jar International Theatre, both of which are Lisbon-based English-speaking companies. But I'm fascinated to learn that you're a founder member of the Dublin-based Balunatics Theatre Company.
SPEAKER_02Indeed, yes.
SPEAKER_00You specialise in adaptations of Irish writers. You also do plays and films, all sorts of stuff. But I'm really fascinated by this. You can speak in a minute, Mick. I'm so sorry. You're sitting on your hands.
SPEAKER_02No, no. I'm being drifted away by the beauty of your voice, Adrienne, as always.
SPEAKER_00God, you're so full of shit. Right. It states Mick Greer is a literature researcher and actor who arrived in Portugal via Malta, Northern Ireland, England, Singapore, and Greece with more illicit baggage than most veteran diplomats. Now that's an introduction to your role in Death and the Maiden, Lucifer. So would you like to explain that journey?
SPEAKER_02Next time I think I'll just take an Uber. It'll be just easier, I think. But no, it's lovely to be here. Lovely to meet you, Harland. Lovely to see you again, Adrienne as always. Thanks very much indeed for the invitation. I've listened to various other creativity podcasts and enjoyed them tremendously. So it's a real pleasure to be here. Uh yes, roots. Yeah, the the Irish thing's a bit strange when you when you hear my accent, which is very much sort of Southeast England. My father was from Belfast or Belfast, as he would say. And my mum was from just outside Lisburn, funnily. So here I am in Lisbon. My father was in the Royal Marines, so we travelled around a lot. And in fact, I was actually born at a small place in Malta called Imtarfa. So I just happened to be there. And then we also lived in Singapore through the services, and I travelled a lot more widely when I started doing TEFL. Came to Portugal and um struck gold, really. I'm incredibly lucky.
SPEAKER_03TEFL, that's a type of frying pan, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02It is, it is. It's the kind of teaching you do that it doesn't stick.
SPEAKER_03You can teach the same lesson every week, basically. Teaching English as a foreign language. Am I right?
SPEAKER_02That's right, teaching English as a foreign language. And I taught in England in an English school and enjoyed it. But it was the Thatcher Years and Cuts, etc. etc. And I never really considered myself a very political animal. But I got a bit depressed by the state of England. So I thought, well, I'll try this. I'll try this TEFL thing, you know, for a year or a couple of years, and then I'll come back. And I first went off to Greece and enjoyed it, and then went to Portugal, and that was it. And this was in the late 1980s, where it was a real boom of teaching English a foreign language. Yeah. You could basically um just stand on a street corner and speak English, yeah, and uh someone would give you a job. I think it's it's it's changed considerably when I came to Portugal talking to people. Oh, you speak English, wonderful, fantastic. Now it's very much what you don't speak English? It really has turned around. Luckily, there's still work for old fogies like me. It's basically the the story, and it's fantastic to have experiences, various cultures. It's wonderful, and it continues to be true.
SPEAKER_03Adrienne mentioned the Lisbon Theatre Company. Adrien was at some point a member, and we've also had Jonathan Wakeman and Amanda Booth as guests on this show. So you're the third Lisbon players person.
SPEAKER_02Well, like Adrienne, Jonathan and uh Amanda or Mandy, as we uh we call her, uh dear friends. We we worked together. I mean, Adrienne was a major member of the Lisbon players in lots of shows.
SPEAKER_03By the way, folks, Adrienne was looking suitably modest to hear that she was a major player.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm not. It's the truth. I was the star. I controlled the dressing room and the stage, and they've never been the same since I left.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I managed to get a screenshot of Adrienne when Harlan was saying that. So that'll be that'll be that'll be made available. T-shirts and mugs and various other merchandising.
SPEAKER_03I'm really keen to pursue the Joyce connection. So you have parents who were Irish, and you have a PhD based on Joyce.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Joyce and theatre. Joyce has been part of my artistic and academic life for all for years. Um, and he's certainly the the author who's influenced me most. I'm a I'm a fan rather than an expert to be on, to be honest. But uh yeah, I mean the the the the PhD, uh Joyce wanted to be the new Ibsen and the new Gerhard Hauptmann as a as a young man, and uh definitely saw himself as a as a playwright, and it didn't really come off. He tried a few things. He he wrote a play that he sent to William Archer, who was Ibsen's English translator, and uh Archer kind of dismissed it and Joyce burnt it. And he he later wrote a play, his only published play called Exiles, which was very Ibsen-esque, and actually uh it's been given a bit of a bad press. There's an old literary Dublin joke about two guys are in the pub and they're looking at a guy looking very depressed over his Guinness. And Seamus says to Paddy, believe it or not, that's what they were called, what's what's the matter? What's the what's the problem with your man over there? He said, Oh God, he's depressed as hell. He's trying to work on a dramatization of exiles, which is a little a little unfair, unfair, I think.
SPEAKER_03But clever observation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Basically, what I was working on is how he incorporated drama into his prose, into his short stories, and and there's a there's a strong sort of dramatic theatricality to a lot of Joyce, including the the Circe chapter in Ulysses, which is written as a play, although it's completely unstageable, obviously, never wasn't intended to be staged, totally surreal, with bars of soap speaking and hundreds of seagulls appearing, etc., etc. I think I was lucky with how I met Joyce because I met him through theatre at Cambridge. I'd done a show in 1982, Troilus and Cressida. I was Ajax and the guy who now has begun to be very prominent from now on in my career, a guy called Paul O'Hanrahan. No guesses where he comes from. Um and he was Thersites, and they have a sort of a almost sort of Laurel and Hardy kind of knockabout relationship. We actually got a nice review in it. It wasn't a great production. Sorry, I'm digressing a bit, but a story that I find amusing. And it's the only review I can ever remember. The Greek warriors and the Trojan warriors were all dressed in these little white jackets. The Greeks had red collars, the Trojans had green collars. And the review said, well, they looked more like Benny Hill Milkman than why Benny Hill milkman rather than any other kind of milkman, I don't know. But anyway, but that's it's a review I remember.
SPEAKER_03Benny Hill, a very dodgy UK comedian of quite a few years ago.
SPEAKER_02Back in the 80s, I mean he'd done something called Ernie, rode the fastest milk cart in the West or something. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Ernie.
SPEAKER_03I get the reference, yeah. It's not so often that you somehow connect James Joyce with Benny Hill, the UK comedian from the 70s.
SPEAKER_02Paul, who was playing Phocides, we really clicked and he said, Look, next year I want to do an adaptation of the Circe chapter, this chapter that's written as a play. I want to dramatize it. You know, would you be interested? At that time, I'd read Dubliners, I'd read Portrait of the Artist as a young man, and I was sort of building up to reading Ulysses as people do. I thought, okay, next summer, next summer, next summer, I'll go for Ulysses. But I was lucky, the reason I say I was lucky, we approached it having to dramatise it, having to put it on stage. So there was no time for sort of awe or hero worship or oh my god, this is Ulysses, oh my god, oh my. We just had to get on with it. And so I got me straight into Joyce. Um, we did the adaptation, it went well. We took it to Edinburgh, this is the summer of 1983, and it won a Edinburgh fringe first. And actually, we're still working together. We're going to be doing Bloomsday in Dublin on the 16th of June this year. There's a group of us, you know, we should have more sense now at our age, but we're still we're still doing it, treading the streets of Dublin. We're doing three street shows and then a show at Wynn's Hotel in Dublin. It's the only building mentioned both in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, if if you're ever in a quiz program.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's a great trivia fact.
SPEAKER_02Could could win you that Ferrari or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Adrienne, what's Bloomsday?
SPEAKER_00Tell us what Bloomsday is. The whole of Ulysses is written about one day, the 16th of June, and Leopold Bloom's trajectory through Dublin. Traditionally now, on the 16th of June every year, the book is read in sections following the trail through Dublin, which is outlined in the book. And then in Lisbon, it's also done every year, isn't it, Mick? Yes. In the Irish Centre. And it's hugely popular. And I tried to revitalize it in Lewis, which is a very literary town, when I came back from Portugal, and it was really hard work. People were not in tune with it because it still had that reputation of being a weighty tome. And the great joy for me is watching people just falling off their chairs with laughter. It's such a rollicking, raunchy, fun piece of work. I love it, and I think it's wonderful that you're going out there to Dublin, Mick, on the 16th of June. I will sit with gritted teeth and think of you all having fun.
SPEAKER_02Read along with us or nip across, yes, yeah. You're more than welcome. Dublin's not very far for you, Adrienne.
SPEAKER_00No, I know. Yeah, well, I'll have to reflect on that.
SPEAKER_03Mick, let me test your PhD type knowledge of James Joyce. I think you'll find this question very easy. What's Ulysses got to do with Hungary, which is where I live.
SPEAKER_02Well, um, Leopold Bloom's father is supposed to have come from Hungary, from Zom Zombatley. I um the pronunciation I'm sure is not correct. Sombathe. Sombathe, Sombathe. He loved it because it sounded like somebody. Uh-huh. And there's a wonderful Joyce statue, and there's a plaque where the Bloom family supposedly came all invented, you know. But it's amazing how this novel has sort of taken on a life of its own. I mean, lots of authors are celebrated around the world, but I don't know of anything that's quite the same as Bloomsday. Yeah. And also the fact that it has, even though it doesn't have chapter headings, the chapters are known as episode from the Odyssey. And people refer, you know, people talk about the Telemachus chapter or the Circe chapter. And again, I don't know any other novel that's had that kind of effect. People should be, oh, the the so-and-so chapter, the this, you know, the so-and-so chapter of Anna Karenina or the so-and-so chapter of the Magic Mountain. Um, yes, all wonderful books, but it's Ulysses has gone a step further. Even people who haven't read it know about it. Yeah. You get people, I mean, it's amazing. People in in in Dublin, you people come, oh yeah, Ulysses, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Have you read it? Oh, so you've read it. Oh, I've never read it. Don't need to read it. We know it. We know it. It's almost like it becomes part of the Dublin DNA in a way. And it's just, as Adriane was saying, it's an unofficial public holiday. You know, Dublin kind of stops, and anyone, I mean, there are professional artists who do it, there are people like us who come over, and then they're just your ordinary Dubliner who just wants to dress up. People dress up uh you know uh as as the characters and just read a bit or just wander around. It's it's wonderful, it's a fantastic sort of democratic day. You know, all this sort of idea of, as Adrienne was saying, this idea of Ulysses as the weighty tome is thrown out the window.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to be a show-off now. Rare, I know. Bear with me. I just happened to be in LA and they were doing it there in LA in a bar. But they were all off book and they were all professional actors. And there was this wonderful, you know, Gertie, this chapter where Bloom is actually watching this woman on the backdrop of fireworks, but he's actually masturbating. He does it very subtly in the text, but they actually had this guy standing next to this woman who was playing Gertie, just sort of fiddling around under this over. I mean, it was absolutely glorious. People were shrieking with laughter. I just thought this is just universal, this stuff. It just works everywhere. It's great.
SPEAKER_02It's life, you know, everything, life is there. Absolutely. I mean, was it Johnson said who's tired of London is tired of life. You know, if you're tired of Ulysses, you're tired of life. And everything's in them, and there is Bloom masturbating. And it makes sense. Uh, in an earlier chapter, he goes to the toilet, and there was a guy called Senator David Norris, who is a sort of Joyce fan and specialist, and he said, Fantastic, Ulysses has ended 300 years of literary constipation. Nobody went for a good crap in books, you know, and he talks it through and he's reading a magazine and he rips the pages out to wipe his bottom, and it's just life. Everything is there from the most basic to then Stephen's poetic flights of fancy, the full range of human experience. Joyce said, you know, people don't understand. It's supposed to be a funny book. I mean, that's not a direct quotation, but basically, he would complain that people didn't have the reaction that Adrienne has been describing. He would love that. Hopefully he's looking down on it, or perhaps looking up, I don't know. Who knows? And enjoying that. Finally, finally, people have got it. No, I'd love to have seen that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We have here three enthusiasts for Joyce, specifically called Ulysses. And by the way, Mick, congratulations on your Sans Barting knowledge. I was pretty sure you'd be aware of that story. Do you know why Virag is the name of Bloom's father?
SPEAKER_02Is it something to do with flower? Is it Hungarian for Bloom's? Hungarian for flower or for Bloom.
SPEAKER_03So the whole thing goes round in another circle of cleverness.
SPEAKER_02There's um a European organization that promotes Irish language and culture. And luckily they they sent me to Budapest in 2021. And I actually did the Bloomsday breakfast at the ambassador's residence in Budapest, and then I went to Sombath and did a show there, like a sort of a 20-minute thing right in front of the house. And it was wonderful. And the enthusiasm was lovely. On the poster, instead of Mick Greer, I was Nick Green. So I thought it was quite a good idea in case it was a disaster. So no, no, it wasn't me. It couldn't be Trace. That fella Nick guy, whoa, rubbish. But it was wonderful, lovely. And the enthusiasm and the knowledge as well, people were really, really into it. I was amazed.
SPEAKER_03We've been talking about Ulysses, but Finnegan's Wake is possibly a whole other kettle of fish. And you're somewhat a specialist in Finnegan's Wake.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if anyone's a specialist in Finnegan's Wake. I'm I'm again I'm an enthusiastic and a and a fan. Again, with the same group of friends after Cersei, we went to Finnegan's Wake, which is divided into four books, and we adapted the first book of Finnegan's Wake, which again went to Edinburgh and was successful. That was something called Nightform. Ulysses is kind of the book of the day, although there are nighttime scenes and it finishes what just after three o'clock in the morning or something. But Finnegan's Wake is definitely the book of the night, the book of the dark. It's a a dream that someone or some people are having. We're not quite sure. So everything is dream convoluted, nothing quite makes sense. He plays with words, language, words dissolve. It's very much like the Lewis Carroll, the you know, Humpty Dumpty portmanteau words where he he creates uh a new language. And at one point, people said that he uses 65 different languages. It's its own language, and people talk about translating Finnegan's Wake. And what are you translating it from? Let alone what are you translating it into? But yes, he plays with consciousness, language, love, life, everything. And it's it's this sort of dream, surreal mixture of things blur as people sleep. It's a wonderful thing, but it it does yes, you're right. I mean it has a sort of a formidable reputation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02For what it's worth, instead of reading it, it's better to listen to it, I think. It suddenly becomes far more approachable, I'd say, when you hear it. Treat it as music almost, as poetry, something to hear, and everyone makes their own sense of it. If you open it at page one and start reading it, looking for a conventional narrative, a conventional novel, conventional clarity, then you're probably not going to get very far. If you just surrender to it and say, okay, this is like nothing else I've ever experienced in literature. And I'm gonna I'm gonna read it out loud. Yeah. Here I am in my own room. I'm just gonna read it out loud to myself, and suddenly it comes to life. There are still passages, you know. You think, well, what for God's sake, Joyce? What are you doing? What are you doing? And his collaborators got fed up with him, but because he worked with very various people who helped, and you know, they would have a line, and they'd say, What about this line? And he said, No, no, no, too simple. No, can't be simple, can't be that simple. It drove people crazy.
SPEAKER_03This sounds like an ideal opportunity to hear a reading from Finnegan's Wake.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Are you up for it, Mick?
SPEAKER_02I'll certainly have a go. By chance, I happen to I happen to have the ending extraordinary, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Serendipity.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Actually, serendipity is a good word for Finnegan's Wake, I think. Absolutely. It's uh a shortened version of the final section of Finnegan's Wake. It's about a family and their relationships. And here, as in Ulysses, Joyce gives a woman the last word. You know, Molly finishes Ulysses after all these foolish men have done their shenanigans around Dublin. The last word is with the woman. And again, he gives the woman the last word. It's nice. There's a line in Ulysses, it's a it's we should trust the women, because a woman always knows when to stop. I don't know, Adrienne, that may or may not be true, but that's what that's what Joyce thought anyway. Or the character in Ulysses thought. But this is Anna Olivia Pluorabell, she's the wife and mother figure. She's also symbolic of the river Lify, Anna Lifia. And here she's an elderly lady, and as the river Lify starts as a young river springing from the hills of Dublin, it flows through Dublin and then slows down as it pours out into the sea. So she is dying. This is her final speech, and in it she thinks about. Her husband, she thinks about her family, and she thinks about her daughter who is coming to replace her. One of the things about Finnegan's Wake is that there's a lot about falling and rising, and every fall suggests a rising, every ending is a beginning, every death is a rebirth. It's very much this cyclical view. The last line of the book is away, alone, alast along the. It's an unfinished sentence. But it is finished. It's finished by the very first words, by the opening, which is river run past even Adams. So really it's away, alone, alast along the river run past even Adam. And that's what Joyce was interested in. This cyclical nature that nothing ends. Everything returns in echoes, which may be distorted echoes, but things go on. So she or go, but her daughter will replace her. And in a sense, be her rebirth. So, anyway, this is the ending of it. This is a woman flowing out into the sea, ending her life. But she accepts it, she accepts the nature of things.
SPEAKER_01But you're changing a culture.
SPEAKER_02You're changing from me, I can feel.
SPEAKER_01Or is it me?
SPEAKER_02I'm getting mixed. And she is coming, swimming in my hindmost, devil taking on me tail, just a whisk, brisk, sly, spry, spink, spank, sprint of a thing. There's some air psaltering. Salterella, come to her own.
SPEAKER_01Oh, for she'll be sweet for you as I was sweet when I came down out of me, mother. My great blue bedroom. The air so quiet, scarce a cloud, in peace and silence. I could have stayed up there for always only. If something fails, first we feel, then we fall.
SPEAKER_02And let her reign now if she likes, gently or strongly as she likes. Anyway, let her reign. For my time is come. I done me best when I was let, thinking always, if I go, all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe troubles, and is there one who understands me? One in a thousands of years of the nights.
SPEAKER_01Alanuvia ultrabelled to remind me of so soft this morning. Ours. Yes, carry me along, Teddy, like you'd done through the toy fair.
SPEAKER_02If I seen him bearing down on me now under widespread wings, like he'd come from archangels, I think I died down over his feet humbly, dumbly, only to wash up.
SPEAKER_01Yes. There's where we pass through grass, we wash the bush. Away, alone, alas, alone, along the Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00Wow. I think you've proved your point there, mate. You need to hear it. You need to listen to it.
SPEAKER_02Someone might take it and read it in a completely different way, and you know, hoping it's uh but it's extraordinary. Um it's extraordinary. That was beautiful. So yeah, as as Harlem was saying, I mean 17 years, it's absolutely extraordinary. People thought he was mad. Maybe he was.
SPEAKER_00I wonder if he was just uh, you know, in that sort of blanket term mad, but certainly he had the brain the size of a planet. He must have done. Where does this stuff come from? Absolutely. How does he weave it all together? Before we move on, I would like to just go back to Ulysses and the women in Ulysses. As a woman, to read that was just so liberating because he's saying women have sexual fantasies. You know, women enjoy sex, they have sensual bodies. But I wonder, in your PhD land, what influence Nora Barnacle had? Do you think that he's brought her into that narrative? Because they had a very unusual sex life, didn't they?
SPEAKER_03Explain Nora Barnacle, first of all, for our listeners.
SPEAKER_02Nora Barnacle was his wife. I mean, he eventually married her after they had children, quite near the end of end of his life. And she she worked in a in a hotel called Finn's Hotel, and he met her and asked her out. And the story is, although this is debated in some quarters, the story is that they first went out on the 16th of June 1904, which is when Ulysses was set, Joyce being Joyce. There are some disagreements about that. But it's a good story, and I hope it's true. She was from Galway, from that, especially in those days, kind of the middle of nowhere, really. She'd come be sent into the city to earn her money. She wasn't illiterate, but she didn't read, she wrote with difficulty, and it clicked. And um, the story is I don't know whether I can say this, say this.
SPEAKER_03I know where you're going with this, Mick.
SPEAKER_02Apparently, towards the end of their first date, she unzipped his trousers and masturbated him, which he enjoyed at the time, and then, of course, then went back and thought, how did she know about that? One of the driving forces of his work was this idea of jealousy. He throve on that. So he was continually fantasizing, I imagining Nora being unfaithful, which, as far as we know, she never was. And there's a statement from Nora which says, Yo, Jim wants me to go with other men. She called him Jim. Jim wants me to go with other men so that he'll have something to write about. Othello was a big feature of his sort of idea of jealousy. And then he just said to her, Okay, let's go off. He decided to leave Ireland, of course. I mean, as famously, you know, he left Ireland and spent the rest of his life writing about nothing else. And she went off with him to first to Italy and then around Paris, Switzerland, and you know, raised two kids, dealt with his alcoholism, his excent, let's call it eccentricities. An extraordinary, extraordinary woman. Apparently, she never read any of his stuff or never read anyone else. Again, I'm it's not an exact quotation, but it's something along the lines of, you know, what's the what's the point of reading anyone else when you're married to the biggest fish? Um, not in those words, but but he he drew on and wanted her to tell him about how she felt during sex, etc. And he used a lot of her in Molly, apparently. In 1912, he went back to Dublin for a while and actually started the first cinema in Dublin, which wasn't a success in the end. But I mean, he wrote her letters, very explicit stuff about what he wanted to do, what he was imagining to do, and these letters, um, absolutely extraordinary. And she she was, yeah, okay, Jim, whatever. And she was a must have been an extraordinary woman.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, with a great name. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know the story about Joyce's father. When when Joyce's father heard her name, um, Barnacle is uh for those people who don't know, it's these little what limpets, these sort of shellfish that attach themselves. So Joyce's father said, Barnacle, huh? She'll stick to him. Ba-boom. And she did. Yeah. And he to her. And he to her. Although I mean there are suggestions that that whether they just existed in his mind and his letters, or whether they actually happened again, there's debate. You you kind of get the feeling that everything was source material for his writing. We would talk about obsessive madness. Yes, the work was the thing, and that everything you get the impression that everything he did. How can I use this? Where does this fit in? I mean, it absolutely extraordinary. And he gathered this group around him. Ridiculous thing. I mean, there was a a nephew of someone, and he wanted to use Huckleberry Finn. I mean, Huckleberry Finn, of course, plays with language as well, or with extraordinary use of language. He wanted to use Huckleberry Finn or parts of Huckleberry Finn, the idea of Huckleberry Finn in Finnegan's wake, but couldn't be bothered to read it. He also had had terrible eyesight towards the end of his life. He he had great trouble reading. So the story is um if I'm not misremembering, he wrote to this nephew of a friend and said, Could you read Huckleberry Finn and send me the bits where you think he's most interesting linguistically, or words to that effect? And the guy did.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, extraordinary, you know, he had this effect on people. I mean, Buck Mulligan and Ulysses call Stephen, who is the Joyce figure, oh, impossible person.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think he must have been an impossible person. And yet there was this magnetism. There was, I don't know whether people thought they were involved in some great quest. They were, I suppose. They were. But people would do mad things. And someone was crossing Paris, and he said, I mean, would you go back to that shop and buy me this, the other side of Paris? And they would. Yeah. And then he'd ask them, you know, oh, by the way, could you lend me 10 francs? The stories are endless. I mean, some apocrypha there, I dare say, but it generated this sort of stories within stories.
SPEAKER_03Stories within stories. I'm fascinated by Joyce and his writings, and it's wonderful to talk to someone who's so steeped in Joycean lore. But let's get back to you. Oh no. Adrienne said you were a founding member of something called Balunatics, and you've been in theatre, you've been in movies, you've been on TV. So let's get back to you and tell us some of your doings.
SPEAKER_02Balunatics, yeah. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Funnily enough, there's a Buster Keaton film, wasn't it, called The Balunatic, which actually had nothing to do with it. After we left Cambridge, a group of us, we decided it was a strange thing. We were doing other things, but we wanted to keep the theatre going. We didn't want to go all out professional. We had enough sense and awareness of our limitations. But we wanted to keep the theatre going. So decided we would do something. And the first thing we did actually was nothing to do with Joyce. It was actually an adaptation of Condide, the Voltaire's Condide. Strange Fate made feature of that is a 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, one of the main areas of the book, isn't it? Things come together. We decided that we would do that. We were looking for a name, and one of the reviews that we had for Cersei in Edinburgh the previous year said, Thank goodness there are lunatics still prepared to try the impossible and succeed, which is very complimentary. Um, so we like the lunatics. And then well, I was reading something, some Voltaire, and he said, Well, part of what I want to do with Condide were these German metaphysicals. He said, I will prick their metaphysical balloons. So we sort of put balloon and lunatics together, completely unaware of the Buster Keaton film. And so we end up balloonatics. I think it must have been like probably three o'clock in the morning in some lock-in in some bar somewhere. We decided it was a good idea. And then, of course, we got the publicity material, so it's stuck. We've been balloonatics ever since. So we did Condide and then Nightfall, the Finnegans Wake, and then we did a four-person Hamlet. We did go all out just before I came to Portugal. We did an eight-week tour of Europe because at Cambridge there was um a group called the European Touring Company, the theatre touring, yes, the ETG. And for for two weeks in December, we would go around universities in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and we'd kept those contacts. So we had those, so we traveled around versions of Gulliver's travels and say a Hamlet waiting for God over bits and pieces. Um, so it kept it going. And then as we got older, the Lunatics Now really is Bloomsday. Paulo Hanrahan, the the the main force. He's been doing Bloomsday for 35 years or something, even on his own sometimes. The rest of us come across every now and again. I think I've done like nine or ten Dublin Bloomsdays over the years of circumstances. So we we come together, we have our own website, etc. And here in Lisbon, I was very lucky to get involved with Lisbon players and Jab and did lots of shows with Adrienne as well and Jonathan and Mandy. I've never put myself bored as an actor and going to castings or anything like that. But as I say, it's a small world, so every now and again people hear about you. And if they're looking for a particular kind of foreigner for a particular kind of part or a voiceover, then I get asked to do them. But it's very rare. Occasional stuff. And the stuff in films and TV, it's kind of blink if you miss me. I'm that sort of foreigner who asks for a beer in the bar. But it's fun, it's fun to do. There's a film that Mandy and I were in, which opened on Thursday, and it's about the last days of the Portuguese dictator, Salazars. It's called Upain Nosso, called Ultimos Dias de Salazar. Upai Nosso is Our Father, The Last Days of Salazar. I don't know whether it's a unique case or not, but basically Salazar fell off a chair, as Adrienne knows, and had a stroke and suffered sort of dementia in effect. But they didn't tell him that he wasn't the president in charge still. They kept it a secret from him. So he still lived in the presidential house. They had people coming along pretending to be ministers, and he would sign papers. Absolutely extraordinary. They didn't dare tell him or didn't want to tell him that he was no longer in charge. And so they had this complete theatre going on around him.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_02So that's the film. Mandy and I are an English couple who go and have dinner with Salazar. And it's it's a two-minute scene, but it's fun, but it's an extraordinary story. This went on for a number of years. People played along with it. I mean, he was far from being sound of mind, but the power of the man or something, they just there's something very Portuguese about that, Adrian.
SPEAKER_00I was just going to say there's something very Portuguese about it. It probably will end up being Trump's final years. And Armando Ianucci could have written that, couldn't he?
SPEAKER_03I was thinking exactly, Death of Stalin. Beautiful stuff. And Mick, do you also play in Portuguese? So some of the series you've done and films you've done, you have been, okay, maybe you're the foreigner, but you're the foreigner in Portuguese. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, occasionally, but very much the foreigner speaking Portuguese. I would never pass for the real thing. Right. At university, I basically teach theatre studies. So it's nice to have that sort of practical aspect as well, to sort of know a little bit more on what I'm talking about rather than just be theoretical. And I try to make the classes are as practical as possible. They all have to do a little play at the end, etc., etc. And there's a new new generation of Portuguese people coming up, I hope. A lot of talent there.
SPEAKER_00So what's next? You're going through this process of change and dare I say aging, as we all are. What? So can you speak up? You're getting old, you old sod. Well, well more creaky and ancient. What keeps you going creativity in your life? And what advice, if any, would you like to give to people who are listening to this?
SPEAKER_02I have nothing original to say, to be honest. Oh, okay. You're as old as you feel. And in my head, I'm still, you know, a 20-year-old running around. And I'm again lucky I'm still in contact with people who say, Oh, what about this? Would you fancy doing this? Yeah. And that's fantastic. Always ideas, which I intend to, you know, to carry on doing what I do till I fall over. What do you think of the ending of Tommy Cooper? What a way to go. He collapsed on stage. People thought it was part of the act and they realized it wasn't. But you know, that I'd be happy. I don't think I'd want to do it in a classroom in front of the students. I think that would be a bit rough for them. Perhaps on stage or somewhere.
SPEAKER_00In front of a set of red velvet curtains would be perfect, wouldn't it? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm always keen to contextualize for someone who's listening from a country which is perhaps not British culture based. This series is apparently mechan, listened to in 29 or more countries around the world. Well. So not everyone knows who Tommy Cooper is, for example, who was a British comedian who actually died on stage, didn't he? And people really thought it was a joke that he was acting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. He was actually a very good magician. The tricks would go wrong. So his act was always going wrong. So people thought, oh, this is another trick that's gone wrong. And then all of a sudden, is there a doctor in the house? And as Adrienne said, you know, what a way to go.
SPEAKER_03I got across your summary of your thoughts about creativity and aging, but I did want to get in that reference to who the heck Tommy Cooper is was. Just like that. Yes, he talked like that. I went to the doctor's the other day.
SPEAKER_02I said, Doctor, I've broken my leg in three places. And the doctor said, Well, don't go to those places. Maybe he would come on stage and people would just start laughing, wouldn't they? He didn't have he didn't have to do anything. It's extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00My sister went to see him and people were laughing before he was on stage because he was mic'd up in the dressing room. So they're all sitting there and he's going, It's dark in here. There we go.
SPEAKER_02If anyone, anyone listening who wants to find out more, you'll get all kinds of little bite-sized clips on YouTube. Uh, I love them. The next project is going to be with Jar. I think it's uh appropriate that we're going to do um a version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, which is about two old comedians, a double act, they were massive in 1930s, 1940s, and somebody has the idea that they should have a reunion. So there's going to be a TV program, which is the history of American comedy or the history of comedy. Wouldn't it be a great idea to have these two come on now in their you know their 70s or whatever and do their act again? There's just one problem, which is that these two guys hate each other. It's a kind of Abbott and Costello thing. They loathe each other, they were a massive success, but they couldn't stand each other. So it's about them rehearsing, etc., etc. But it's also I think more about aging and accepting aging and dealing with aging. They're still doing the routine that they did, what whatever it was 40 years ago. I'm doing with uh another guy who is similar age to me. That should be fun. So we're hoping to do that in the autumn. So I think aging and dealing with that and creativity, I think, will be very much in our mind when we're working on that. I'm looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_01If I can remember all my lines.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And when I come on and when I don't, I love the idea of him sitting in the dressing room. It's dark in here. Tommy King for I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's dark. Oh, it's dark in here.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's been a joy talking with you and hearing especially a lot about James Joyce. And we've talked a bit about Irish and Celtic culture. You're going to not only read us but sing us out with a semi-traditional Scottish Irish song. Perhaps you can tell us about it, Mick.
SPEAKER_02I think it it's it's appropriate. It's called The Parting Glass. It's a song of farewell. Originally it's a traditional Scottish ballad, but it's been part of the Irish folk repertoire for years and years and years. Apparently, it used to be the most popular ballad before Robert Burns produced Old Lang's Eine in Scotland, anyway. So I crave your indulgence. I really need to be in the shower, to be honest. It'd be best, but I'm a shower singer more than anything else.
SPEAKER_03Before we get the song, let's say thank you so much. Thank you for your time, your energy, your stories. It's been great for me meeting you for the first time. And I imagine for Adrienne remeeting.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely been great. But I quite like to dedicate this song to absent friends.
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. Me too. Me too. Yeah. And I think this project is wonderful. And I look forward to hearing more. I mean, the ones I've heard have been super. So congratulations and uh more power to your elbow. Fantastic. Keep up the good work. It's real a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Nick. So this is Professor Mick Rear. Professing to be a singer, but don't mm hmm. I think it's going to be lovely with the parting glass.
SPEAKER_01Of all the money that ever I had, I spent it in good company. And all the harm that ever I've done, a less it was to none but me, and all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall. So fill to me the parting glass. Good night and joy be with you all. If I had money enough to spend and leisure time to sit awhile, there is a fair maid in this town who sorely has my heart beguiled, her rosy cheeks and ruby lips. I swear she has my heart enthrall, so fill to me the parting glass. Good night and joy be with you all. Of all the comrades that ever I had, they are sorry for my going away, and all the sweethearts that ever I kissed, they would wish me one more day to stay. But since it falls unto my lot, that I should go and you should not. I'll gently rise and I'll softly call good night and joy be with you all.
SPEAKER_03Creativity, if you think you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, tune in to the Creativity Podcast.