by Rose Rushe
DES Keogh knows how to hold a room together, not least when he’s writing the songs.
Last year he brought the rafters down in Moyross’ Corpus Christi School when his tour of ‘Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer’ stopped off, courtesy of Limerick Regeneration working with the late Richard Ryan.
Keogh’s visceral, no-holds-withheld take on life in ’60s Ireland as ageing bachelor John Bosco Hogan would have delighted John B Keane, a man who had clear-eyed compassion for those on the margin.
Keogh is back in Moyross tonight Wednesday May 20 at 8pm with his play on George Bernard Shaw’s private life. Go see. It’s only a fiver for this dirty-funny deliciousness.
Now tipping 80, Keogh’s new show is ‘My Fair Ladies’. He looks the part in three-piece check and bushy beard, his height and lope bringing us GBS in credible, benevolent flesh. That the crusty Victorian vegetarian had such a galloping time with his trousers off is eyepop. Actor/ writer Keogh mines the playwright’s correspondence and works for evidences of many a rewarding love affair and shrewd observation of the fairer sex.
Being himself, Des Keogh, he gives it welly. This is a mischievous, merciless exposition of the late-coming virgin who was pulled regularly by society women and then as a husband, evolved into serial adulterer joyfully.
Raised “without love, without hate” by a mother who loathed domesticity and bounced off to London to work as a singer with a daughter whom she could tolerate, George Bernard admits cheerfully that he never got to associate sex with guilt or matters of conscience.
Keogh, directed sparingly by producer Pat Talbot, gives us a run-through of a life chaste, chased, then avidly chasing the top actresses of the day – Ellen Terry, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Molly. His celibate marriage to Irish heiress Charlotte Townsend poodled on with affection and much travel.
He earned a pittance as music critic while Charlotte, whom he adored, was loaded and indulgent. Ladles of wit, genius and critical/ public success must have sweetened her palate for polyamory but they stuck it out quite handsomely. Keogh does well in spinning charisma.
‘My Fair Ladies’ moves from last night’s berth at Southill Area Centre to Corpus Christi School, Moyross, 8pm, Wednesday 20 only. Back to Limerick again on Wednesday June 3, 8pm at Lime Tree Theatre, www.limetreetheatre.ie
Set design by Jim Queally, lighting/ stage by Moyra D’Arcy. From Patrick Talbot Productions.
