Roddy Doyle Walks Into A Bar

All the bar’s a stage…

t’s a beautifully simple idea, and one that fit the Horse & Hound just beautifully on Monday night…

Take a play about two Dublin eejits talking nonsense about the after-life, German football, Nigella Lawson’s muffins and hospital car park attendants in grey tracksuits, and plonk them straight into a real-life Oirish pub.

And they don’t come much more Oirish than The Horse & Hound in Delgany.

The play is Two Pints, a production that grew out of a series of Facebook posts by the playwright Roddy Doyle – so, the witty one-liners hiding a multitude of gins, and fags, and failed promises, were all present and politically-incorrect, being from the man who gave us The Snapper, The Commitments and, just to prove that he isn’t all Brendan O’Carroll nudge-nudge, wank-wank, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors.

It was only the second venue of a 23-bar nationwide tour – Dublin’s The Flowing Tide having launched this little ship – and already you could see that the two main actors, Liam Carney and Declan Clarke-lookalike Lorcan Cranitch, were having fun. And how could you not when Roddy Doyle is giving you crowdpleasing zinger after zinger…?

Talk of how safer it was for young boys around Christian Brothers once their voice broke, how Nigella Lawson would make a much better park attendant, how a diet of fruit and veg can curdle your sexual preferences, and how pretty much everything is edible if you drown it in Bisto – all observations pointed and pointless in equal measure.

From the start, the packed house in the Horse were putty in the actors’ hands. All they had to do was deliver a choice swear word every now and then – the c-word being particular effective – and the roar of guilty laughter rose like a wave.

From Waiting For Godot to Adam & Paul, there’s something mischievous, moving and hugely revealing about two eejits talking shite about this big bad world of ours, as they riff endlessly and aimlessly on that moment’s Royale With Cheese. It also helps that Dublin humour isn’t all that difficult to master. By and large, you only have to add the words “ME BOLLIX!” at the end of a repeated sentence, and you’re in.

“I’m heading down to the shops for a packet of crisps and a Twix.”

“I’m heading down to the shops for a packet of crisps and a Twix, ME BOLLIX!”.

Boom! You have yourself a hit. Roddy Doyle is made of sterner stuff though, and there has to be a little closing pathos to send everyone home feeling emotionally full. The death of a loved one will usually suffice.

A tad on the long side – two hours and twenty, with two intervals – to be fair to everyone involved, the time just flew by. Although, for the actors and anyone in spitting sight of the front row in the Horse, the last ten minutes tonight kinda dragged, given that A Complete & Utter Feckwit was texting on her phone for all that time, even though she was the closest person in the room to the two actors. 

This eejit was all of two feet away from the two actors. Two feet. On her phone. And ‘whispering’ questions to her fella.

If anyone reading this knows the woman, please, please, please, slap her hard across the back of the head, from us. Twice. And if she asks you why, just text her, ‘You’re an eejit‘.

But, hey, it was a magical night. And here’s Roddy to explain how it all came together…