RADIO REVIEW:IT WOULD be nice to hear an account of the Celtic Tiger that doesn't include rocket salad, bad rich people, good poor people, posh people with daughters called Sasha and Sophie and polite Polish girls bewildered by the coarse Irish nouveaux riches.
We don’t actually sit around talking about Italian coffee machines in real life. Do we? Nor do we discuss being rich and powerful like characters from Dallas. Or do we?
"I saved you from all that – being poor," property developer Dan (Rory Nolan) tells his wife Amy (Lisa Ann McLoughlin) in Anne-Marie Casey's S unday Playhouse: The Games Room(RTÉ Radio One), adapted from a short story by Maeve Binchy. A group of old friends gather for lunch in the country, a kind of latter-day Abigail's Partymeets The Big Chillfor silly middle-class Irish people like . . . (Note to readers: this would be a good time to awkwardly fiddle with the ornaments on our mantels.) It was an enjoyable comedy of financial and marital errors, with a posse of talented actors. Kevin (Malcolm Douglas), a taxi driver, arrives dressed in cowboy boots and leather trousers with Anna (Maeve Fitzgerald), his much younger Polish girlfriend. Sally-Ann, a botoxed femme fatale who owns a chain of strip clubs, mistakes Anna for the hired help. That's well-heeled Irish people for you: no manners.
Radio plays tend to have too much exposition, but there were some stand-out lines that were fresh and funny. Kevin says of Anna: “I was called a fat bastard all my life. Of course I’m showing her off.” And when Dan discovers his wife has been secretly taking the pill, he tells her: “You have taken my son and heir, and scrunched him up in the bottom of your handbag with your mouldy Tic Tacs.”
Joan (Miriam Kelly) rolls her vowels with enough glee to make her dialogue come alive: “Martin, your hair is perpendicular!” she says, looking at an old photograph of her husband.
Still, there were moments of quiet lucidity, even among the most arrogant characters. “Where has all our money gone?” Anna asks her husband. Dan replies: “It never existed in the first place.” Heaven forbid that we should see ourselves in that.
Mooney(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) was trying some character analysis of his own on Tuesday with Imre Somogyi, author of Reading Toes: Your Feet as Reflections of Your Personality. "Tell me about the bog standard toe," Derek Mooney asked. Somogyi replied, "The toe is like an antenna. It broadcasts and it receives . . . Your big toe is your communication toe."
Des used to work in corporate entertainment. Somogyi said he was flexible regarding sex. “Does it mean you’re acrobatic?” Brenda Donohue asked. Somogyi said, “In the choice of having sex, so positions . . .” Mindful of their own big toes and those of their demographic, Mooney wisely decided to leave it at that.
Mary, a Mooneyshow regular, was told she needs to be in control. "That's 100 per cent accurate," she said. "G'way!" Donohue gasped. Somogyi said, "Your nails tell me that you have very good ears." Mary affirmed this: "People do come up to me and tell me things they wouldn't tell other people because I listen." Mary couldn't believe her ears/nails: "It's like he's known me all his life . . . I'm absolutely gobsmacked." After 20 minutes of this, that made two of us.
The snooty characters in The Games Roomwould probably turn their noses up at the guest on Tuesday's Moncrieff(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays), which is a big compliment for Mary Murray-Burke, the mother from the family showband Crystal Swing. She denied reports that she was leaving the band. She told Sean Moncrieff, "We're reflecting on what the future is going to hold for us." And on she went. . . She was mid-sentence when Moncrieff interrupted: "Sorry, Mary, but I have to let you go. They're screaming at me here. We have to do three more ad breaks between now and four o'clock . . ." Oh, cruel and fickle fame . . .
But Mary wasn’t shooed away so easily. “I just want to say, Sean, I’m not leaving Crystal Swing. We’re sticking together for as long as it takes . . .”
I heart Crystal Swing. They’re not polished up like new pennies, they have a guileless, homemade gumption: a happy family giving it socks. What’s not to like? To quote that Kit-Kat ad, whether or not they can sing or dance, let’s hope they a) have up-to-date passports and b) go a long way.
