Eamon’s show puts Maeve in spotlight

Eamon Morrissey has been writing and performing in one-man shows for years, but the actor who is best known these days for playing Cass in RTÉ’s soap Fair City, says it doesn’t get any easier, despite practice.

Eamon will visit Galway’s Town Hall Theatre next Monday, May 25, with Maeve’s House, a touring production from the Abbey Theatre.

The one-man show features extracts from the writings of Dublin-born Maeve Brennan, a leading figure in New York’s literary scene for much of the last century before mental illness and alcoholism saw her become a bag lady. When she died in 1993, in a New York nursing home, she was an almost-forgotten figure.

Eamon Morrissey, now aged 72, grew up in the village of Ranelagh, in the south side of Dublin City. His parents had bought their house from Robert and Una Brennan, both of whom were involved in the struggle for Irish independence. Eamon’s father had fought alongside Robert Brennan in 1916 and later,during the War of Independence and Civil War.

Robert Brennan was appointed Irish Ambassador to Washington in the 1930s and moved his family to the American capital.

Growing up, Eamon knew of the connections between the families. He knew of Maeve Brennan’s short stories too, as these appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which was renowned for the quality of its writing.  His mother, also called Maeve, was a great fan of the magazine, he recalls. These days you can buy it freely – in the 1950s it was “an extravagance”.

In 1966, as a 23-year-old actor with the Abbey Theatre, Eamon was in New York appearing in the Broadway premiere of Philadelphia, Here I Come! He recalls being in the subway, reading a short story in The New Yorker which made the hairs on his neck stand up, because it described perfectly the wooden stairs up to the bedrooms of his childhood home.

The author’s name wasn’t at the top of the article, so he turned to the end to check the author. It was Maeve Brennan. He was so intrigued, he contacted her via The New Yorker. She arranged to meet him in the renowned Russian Tea Rooms – Eamon reckons Brennan, who was a hard drinker for most of her life, was trying to stay off alcohol.

“She had a fearsome reputation in New York at the time, but she was very nice to me and loved that I was enjoying New York,” says Eamon. Back at home, “the more I read her, the more I came to appreciate her. She wrote wonderful prose”.

Brennan’s short stories were mostly set in Dublin and many dealt with people who were stuck in cul-de-sac lives and marriages. These were melancholy, but she also contributed factual pieces to The New Yorker under the guise of The Long-Winded Lady, and for these, “she was a merry writer”, says Eamon.

Brennan lived in New York, but her stories revealed a woman who knew an awful lot about the Ireland of the 1950s and 60s, he adds. She had stayed in touch with other writers here, especially other women, who advised her not to return as it was no country for women.

“She wasn’t political, but the cul-de-sac stories were about the dying of a dream, and the relationships between the sad couples reflected the disappointment at what had happened to the Irish dream, post-Independence,” says Eamon. Her end, as “almost a bag lady” was terrible, he adds, “but she was a great writer, who belonged everywhere”.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.