Townhall Cavan's darkly comic take on Dickens' classic

Damian McCarney

“Scrooge is the most famous tight, miserable bastard in all the world,” begins Philip Doherty. “And Cavan, unfortunately has this reputation for being tight - so we thought that’s an extraordinary thing that we could play around with - how it hasn’t been done before is beyond me. He’s the perfect modern day Scrooge as far as we’re concerned!”
Philip has teamed up with Kevin McGahern to write and direct ‘Scrooge and Marley: A Cavan Christmas Carol’, their take on Dickens’ classic for this year’s Townhall Cavan’s festive comedy. Victorian Britain of the original has been ditched in favour of present day Cavan Town and Philip describes their version as a “black comedy” with a “dark Christmas fairytale vibe”.
“It’s very very funny. It’s been a joy to work with Kevin on that... any bits of comedy that can be found, has been found - not in a gratuitous way, because you need the dark scenes, and the sad scenes, and melancholic scenes to make the funnier scenes more enjoyable.”
Philip and Kevin have reimagined Scrooge as “a tight fisted publican in Cavan Town” and have pilfered traits of Basil Fawlty and Bernard Black, Dylan Moran’s character from Black Books.
“He’s an outrageous character who we really enjoyed writing, but we stayed faithful to the story as far as the template,” he says. “There’s moments when he’s ranting on about the plight of the modern day publican, and I’d love there to be publicans sitting in the audience just nodding their heads in agreement, because he has a lot of points to make.”
Philip explains that Dickens wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ as a satire on society of his times, noting that carol singers had only just become the “new hip thing” in the 1840s. In homage to Dickens, the Cavan show too has “a satirical edge”.

Cast
Taking on the lead role of Ebenezer Scrooge is Keith James Walker, who has previously appeared in Townhall Cavan’s ‘The Thin Veil’ and a few of Philip’s productions staged in Dublin. Surprisingly Keith isn’t a Breffni-ite.
“Because he’s the main role, I needed to get someone on it full time. But Dublin actors, they find it very hard to do the Cavan accent for some reason. He’s from Louth, he knows Cavan, he knows this landscape, he’s a wonderful actor, and he’s got a really dark wit about him in real life, so he’s making the part his own.”
Having already done a couple of stand-up shows in Cavan, Ed Sammon best known as the priest from RTÉ’s ‘Bridget & Eamon’ returns to share with Ray Reilly the role of ‘Tanker Smith’ the local barfly. ‘Scrooge and Marley’ will also introduce American actress Nicole Beck, now living in Cavan to a local audience. “I think she’s a huge talent enthused Philip, “she’s Scrooge’s love interest when he was young.”
Also amongst the 19-strong cast are many homegrown talents, including the likes of Paddy Sheanon, Darren Lynch, Ciara Harton, Stevie O’Brien and Malachy McKeever who plays Mr Fezziwig.
“Mr Fezziwig was Scrooge’s first boss, who was the accountant who loved Christmas,” explains Philip. “We’ve changed it so Scrooge goes to New York when he’s a young lad to work in a pub, but he ends up working in the most flamboyant nightclub in New York - it’s the campest, most outrageous place - think Club Kiss and Studio 54, so it’s going to be a huge scene of colour.”

Partnership
‘Scrooge and Marley’ sees Philip and Kevin work together for the first time since they co-wrote The Devil’s Ceili in 2012. They’ve both been busy, Kevin presenting The Republic of Telly and RTÉ documentaries, and Philip as part of the team who set up the Cavan Townhall Arts Centre, and countless plays.
“It’s been brilliant to work with Kevin again,” Philip says. “Devil’s Ceili kept going since 2012, so it feels like we’ve still been working with that.”
The Devil’s Ceili was taken on by Corn Mill Theatre and the Carrigallen group won the open section of the All Ireland Drama Festival in 2014. Thinking back to the first production Philip could never have foreseen the success their collaboration would enjoy.
“When you’re writing it obviously you don’t think that far ahead, you’re just trying to make it the best you can when you’re doing it. It was close to the wire when we were putting that show on originally - we had to build a theatre out of a warehouse. I remember the opening night, when the audience just absolutely loved it we couldn’t believe it. It was like getting out of jail! To think it would win the All Ireland - not in our wildest dreams did we think that would happen.”
So why resume their collaboration now?
“We talked about different projects but just everything didn’t fit, and this seemed to fit perfectly for us both. We both loved the story, and we thought we could do a radical new version of it and breathe new life into it.”

Love
In the course of our interview Philip repeatedly says how it’s one of his favourite stories, and his enthusiasm rings true.
“It’s the great redemption story - a great story of a character moving from dark to light and I love those stories.
“I played Marley when I was in Cavan Youth Drama - I was about 15 and Aaron Monaghan was Scrooge. It’s always stayed with me, the story - you want to do a Christmas show that everyone’s going to love.
“As much as I’d love to do a Pinter,” he deadpans, “I think Christmas is just a time to really enjoy life and to do a comedy version of a Christmas Carol has been on the cards for a long long time, with a big cast - big Christmas festival energy to the whole thing, and I think people are going to have an absolute ball with this.”

Scrooge and Marley: A Cavan Christmas Carol takes place at Townhall Cavan Arts Space on Saturday 17th, Sunday 18th, Wednesday 21st, Thursday, 22nd, Friday 23rd, and Wednesday 28th and Thursday, 29th December at 8pm. Tickets €15. This show contains strong language and is not suitable for under 12s. Tickets can be booked online at townhallcavan.yapsody.com.