NO BLACKS,NO DOGS, NO POLES
by
Tom O’Brien
World premiere
PENTAMETERS THEATRE, 28 HEATH ST. LONDON NW3 6TE
20th May – 8th June…….Tues – Sat 8pm…Sun 5pm…adm. £12 & £10
Directed by Jesse Cooper….Produced by Leonie Scott-Matthews
The dysfunctional Kennedy clan are having a re-union. There’s the father, Con, a successful building contractor in London who has had to relocate back in Ireland because of tax irregularities in the UK. Con is secretly bisexual, although not-so-secret from his wife, Marion, who has known it all along and kept quiet about it. His estranged son, Michael, turns up after five years in Australia with Cathy, his new aborigine wife. To say his parents are surprised would be putting it mildly. His nephew, Jimmy, also turns up and it is soon apparent that his racist, bigoted views haven’t mellowed any as he has got older.
We learn that Jimmy is there at Con’s invitation; his real reason being to spy on Marion, who Con suspects of having an affair. Jimmy also has his own agenda, selling crack cocaine to the local drug users – a plan which backfires when the drugs, which he has buried in the back garden, are discovered by Michael, heightening the already tense atmosphere in the house. Add in JJ, construction manager for Con, whose attraction to Marion must be obvious to everyone except Con.
Tom O’Brien is a native of Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford, Ireland and is a full time writer and playwright. Performed plays include Money from America, Cricklewood Cowboys, On Raglan Road. Johnjo, Gorgeous Gaels, Brendan Behan’s Women, Down Bottle Alley etc. Books include Cricklewood Cowboys, The Shiny Red Honda, Cassidy’s Cross etc. Formerly a construction worker, Tom has lived in Hastings UK since 2000.
It is interesting how I came to write the play in the first place. A few years ago I was on holidays in my native Waterford and it struck me how many Polish people were working in the city, in the bars, hotels, restaurants etc, and how polite and customer friendly they were. I felt they were a credit to their own country and definitely a welcome addition to Ireland. Not least that they served you with a smile, and not the surly expression that many of our own people wore.
My illusions were rudely shattered when some of my own relations suddenly said, ‘Why don’t them effing Poles go back to their own country? Coming over here, taking all our effing jobs!
I argued that a lot of the jobs they were doing were the ones the Irish themselves didn’t want to do in the first place. But they weren’t for changing, and it was clear to me that this was racism, and it was as deeply engrained as any I had ever witnessed in England. And that this attitude was widespread in the country.
I had come to London first in the mid-1960s, and could still recall walking down Kilburn High Road, looking at the small ads in the shop windows advertising rooms to let. Always prominent, in large letters, were the words, NO IRISH or NO BLACKS, or NO DOGS – and sometimes all three were written together! Now fifty years later the wheel had gone full circle; and the racism that we experienced in London back then was being experienced by the Polish and other Eastern Europeans in present-day Ireland. Website http://gorgeousgael.com/
Press Night: Thursday, 22nd May at 8.00pm
Telephone 0207 435 3648 to confirm attendance
Tuesday, 20th May – Sunday, 8th June 2014
Tuesday – Saturday at 8.00pm
Sunday at 5.00pm
(No performance Mondays)
Tickets: £12.00 / Concessions: £10.00
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