Form left: Paul (Jonty Weston), Sean (Callum McGuire), and Elizabeth (Anna McCormick) reenact local legend of the capture of a big, strange fish in Irish waters by skipper Joe Welch (McGuire) in Red Fox Theatre’s Catch of the Day.
The pub in Irish dramas is a center not just of drinking, but also of telling tall tales. In J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, a new arrival, Christy Mahon, boasts of killing his father. In Conor McPherson’s The Weir, the regulars exchange ghost stories. But the atmosphere of Catch of the Day, by Megan Jenkins and the Red Fox Theatre company, is different. There’s music already happening on stage when one enters, and the gregarious cast may be engaging the audience in conversation or offering potato chips up and down the aisle or sniping at one another. The slapdash mix of music and comedy is more goulash than ghoulish, yet the lack of structure turns out to be one of the show’s charms.
Elizabeth and Sean dance as Jamie (Ben Simon) plays an Irish tune.
The four principals who sing and tell tales don’t get around to the main story for a while. First, there are bits of Irish history to toss out, as well as the lore of Dingle, the town where the piscatory event of the title took place. Inevitably, perhaps, there’s a lively delivery of the comic ballad “Red-Haired Mary,” written by Seán McCarthy (1923–90), with comically understated lyrics about a bar fight in Dingle over a flame-haired lass, with the refrain:
Keep your hands off Red-Haired Mary
Her and I will soon be wed.
There are revelations about Irish residents fleecing American tourists:
Old Johnny McGuire’s put up a sign on the Church Road. Says, “Hold a baby lamb—5 euro.” Now there’s all these Yanks paying five euro to hold one of his scraggy sheep.
Throughout, the classic ballad “The Wild Rover,” popularized by the Dubliners’ 1964 rendition, serves as a through line, first sung beautifully and vigorously by Callum McGuire as Sean, a hard-drinking, blustering center of attention. It’s accompanied by foot-stomping on the words that begin with N in the refrain:
Paul, as little John Brosnan in 1966, bemoans a terrible mistake he made while handling the fish, as Sean, Paul, and Elizabeth look on.
And it’s no, nay, never
No, nay never no more
Will I play the wild rover
No never no more.
Under Megan Jenkins’s direction, the broadly played piece encompasses Fungie, a dolphin that arrived in Dingle Bay in 1983 and stayed for several years. The locals are comically astonished that the New York sophisticates don’t know about their dolphin, who has a statue, but he’s only a prelude to the famous catch several decades ago—the event of the title, described by Paul (Jonty Weston):
And this skipper, this particular skipper, back in ’66, was called Joe Welch, OK? It was Joe Welch and his crew. On a boat called The Morning Star. In Dingle Bay.
The crew’s nets caught a big one. As Jamie (Ben Simon, a terrific fiddler) remembers:
And what a fabulous-looking fish it was. With a beard of alien-looking feelers, waving whiskers on his chin. A long, beautiful body with a disgustingly ugly face on the end of it. … Like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
Sean, Elizabeth, and Paul interact with audience members, offering drinks and mild ribbing. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
The discovery that the fish is a sturgeon, a rarity in Irish waters, leads to the question of what to do with it. It turns out that it can’t be sold. The law says it must be delivered “to the reigning monarch, or the head of state.” Resisting the idea of sending it to Queen Elizabeth II (why the queen would have a right to it in 1966, long after Irish independence, isn’t clear), they decide it should go to Éamon de Valera—and the explanation of who de Valera was, and what a taoiseach is, ensues. They offer the fish to de Valera in a phone call (the late prime minister’s actual words are snipped and integrated as if he’s in conversation with the Dingle residents).
There is a major setback when the townspeople gather to see the fish, and Welch tells young John Brosnan (Weston again) to pick it up. He’s too small and confused to handle the fish properly, however, and disaster strikes. But disaster has often been the lot of the Irish. As Elizabeth (Anna McCormick, the fourth member of the cast) sings about the history of England and Ireland that begins with an invasion by Henry II in 1171, one learns:
No Irish laws could be decreed
Unless their English “King” agreed
And he hanged and he quartered and otherwise slaughtered
Those in the way of his greed.
The sturgeon story—which, by the way, is a true one and pieced together from people who knew the principals, or were actually there, including the grown Brosnan, whose voice one hears on tape—eventually involves famished nuns, a second sturgeon, a mystical fish seller, and more singing of “The Wild Rover.” Catch of the Day is an unexpected delight.
Red Fox Theatre’s Catch of the Day runs through June 28 at 59E59 Theatres (59 E. 59th St.). Evening performances are at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2:15 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit 59e59.org.
Playwright: Megan Jenkins & Red Fox Theatre Company
Director: Megan Jenkins
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