Present day Ireland 1968
The FOX MELARKEY SHOW marquee, Ballybeg
Inside Fox’s marquee – the stage and backstage. The dividing line is a flimsy and transparent framework. Backstage: In a circle around the primus stove are some upturned boxes and some props. Fox’s piano accordion is in the wings.
FOX: Well, there’s the truck; and two vans – one in semi-mint condition; and the marquee and the stage; and the ornate proscenium and velour curtains.
CRYSTAL: For God’s sake look around you man. Holes in the roof. Broken seats. And when the truck falls apart what’s going to pull the vans?
It is set in the tent and caravan of the FOX MELARKEY VARIETY SHOW at Ballybeg and at a country crossroads.
Black and white photograph of Cyril Cusack as Fox Melarkey. Photo: Austin Finn
Photo of cast with Louis Rolston as Fox Melarkey, 1980
AUDIENCE: Slow hand clapping and chanting of ‘We Want Fox! We Want Fox!’
FOX: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. You have been a wonderful audience and it’s a great pleasure for the Fox Melarkey Show to be back again in Ballybeg. Tomorrow’s our last night in Ballybeg. Same time, same place, children under seven admitted free. A complete new variety show, another lucky raffle, and by popular demand a repeat of tonight’s classical drama, The Doctor’s Story. See you again tomorrow. God Bless.
FOX: Can’t even speak English, that fella. Must be one of those Gaelic speakers from the back of the hills.
FOX: Weary of all this… this making-do, of conning people that know they’re being conned. Sick of it all. Not sick so much as desperate; desperate for something that… that has nothing to do with all this.
CRYSTAL: I am not drunk, Fox. But I am rotten. Papa’s dying in hospital, Gabriel’s going to jail. The show’s finished. We’ve no money. And I’m happy as a lark.
FOX: Anything that’s going anywhere has to pass here. Dublin-Galway-Cork-Derry; you’re at the hub of the country, girl.
FOX: Should we go up through the gap or should we go round by the foot of Glenmore?
FOX: As a matter of fact we’ve got to be in Ardbeg by tomorrow morning.
At Ardkill a week later
FOX: Pulling out in the morning as a matter of fact. Booking lined up in Ardmore.
FOX: And then one day we were passing through Ballymore.
EXTRACT: I never knew which I liked better: to be playing in the school yard at lunch-time, and look up, and suddenly see the tall figure of M. L’Estrange mounted on his bicycle and free-wheeling recklessly down the long hill that hid us from the town of Omagh; or to be in class, staring dreamily at an open book, and then hear the scrape of his handlebars against the school wall…. the moment he appeared in the doorway our quick, country eyes devoured him: the calm face; and the slender white hands; and the long silvery hair that had given a gloss to the collar of his frock-coat; and the black striped trousers, frayed at the bottom; and the soiled white scarf; and the glittering rings… Mother never shared my excitement – ‘Don’t tell me that old trickster’s here again!’…
Although I saw his tricks every year for five or six years I remember only two of them. In one he knotted a heavy rope to a back tooth, gave the rope a tug, and out came a heavy wooden molar the size of a turnip…
If by some miracle mother were to say, ‘Go off with M. L’Estrange, son. Travel the world with him’, or if M. L’Estrange were to come back and say in his persuasive voice, ‘Your son and I have planned to make a grand tour of Ireland and England and the whole of Europe,’ then I would have floated off with him, and together we would have drifted happily from theatre to theatre, from country to country.
FOX: And the Fox was cycling out to make his fortune in the world with nothing but his accordion and his rickety wheel and his glib tongue.
DETECTIVE 2: Bloody gypsies. Same all over. Stinking gypsies! Let’s go. Been after you for quite a while now, Paddy. And after I’ve finished with you, you’ll be sorry you ever left your gypsy encampment.
Brian Friel became an active member of the first Derry committee to help the travelling community in the 1960’s’. (Pat Hume, 2018)
Brian Friel letter to Hilton Edwards, Play Director, 27 March 1968
BRIAN FRIEL: If you don’t like the play as it is, with all my imperfections on its head, or if for any reason you do not wish to take it on, don’t have the least hesitation or feel the least embarrassment in sending it back to me. Of course I would be disappointed; but you know as well as I that it is only on the fundamentals we disagree! There is one ideal.
Photographs of Brian Friel at rehearsals, news clipping, 1968
Brian Friel in letter to Hilton Edwards, Play Director, 30 September 1968
BRIAN FRIEL: When Fox insists that “She’s to know nothing” – he says it twice, p.26 and p.32 – his only thought is to protect the woman he loves passionately from any tiny hurt. Again, on p. 31: “I didn’t tell her – for her sake, not yours” – same motivation. And on p.37 “My Crystal is the only good part of me”. All key lines.
Fox derives no pleasure from betraying Cid and Tanya and Pedro and ultimately Crystal – witness his total breakdown when Crystal leaves.
Fox is a man. He may not be admirable or lovable or even pitiable but I am certain that he is within our understanding.
Friel’s notes on costumes for the various characters in the play
BRIAN FRIEL:
FOX — In any more lucrative profession he would be a natty dresser. Perhaps slightly ‘theatrical’ clothes – checked trousers, bow-tie or more likely a cravat, greasy velour hat worn at a defiant angle, gay shirt, suede shoes that have gone bald. Dash and cheek.
PAPA — Dark, baggy flannels. Pullover. Shabby sports jacket. Almost certainly a woollen muffler.
PEDRO — I think he will wear the same clothes on and off – except that he’ll probably have a ‘good’ blazer for his act – green? Wine? (The dog’s outfit will be of the same colour).
Letters to Hilton Edwards from Brian Friel, 27th March 1968 and 30 September; Friel’s notes on costumes for the various characters in the play. Crystal and Fox, Poster, The Gaiety Theatre, 1968
✭ Crystal and Fox, Book Jacket, courtesy of The Gallery Press
✭ Crystal and Fox, Programme, The Gaiety Theatre, 1968 (National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,061 /1)
✭ Black and white photograph by Austin Finn of Cyril Cusack as Fox Melarkey (National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,061 /1)
✭ Photo of cast with Louis Rolston as Fox Melarkey 1980, in Lyric Theatre Programme of Translations undated (courtesy of An Grianán Theatre)
✭ Photograph of Brian Friel, news clipping, 1968 (National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,061 /1)
✭ Postcard of the Gap, Courtesy of Donegal County Museum
✭ Crystal and Fox (1968) by Brian Friel (London: Faber & Faber) 1970
✭ The Harvest Home, played by Jim Prendergast, in O’Connor’s Pub, Blackwater, County Wexford. Date created: 1971-09-27. UCD Digital Library
✭ The Illusionists (1966) in The Gold in the Sea, Stories by Brian Friel. London: Victor Gollancz 1966, p30-44
✭ Brian Friel’s art collection raises almost €200,000 for Peter McVerry Trust, by Sarah Slater, quoting Pat Hume in Irish Examiner THU, 27 SEP, 2018 (https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30871828.html)
✭ Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
✭ Letters to Hilton Edwards from Brian Friel, 27th March 1968 and 30 September, in National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,061 /1
✭ Friel’s notes on costumes for the various characters in the play (n.d., 2pp), in National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,061 /1
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