Galway Advertiser 2001/2001_11_15/GA_15112001_E1_037.pdf 

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GALWAY'S MOST COMPREHENSIVE ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - EDITED BY feff O'Connell

Still a 'Galway Girl'
IN THEmidst of a heavy rehearsal schedule with Druid for her new play, Connor Maguire ruthleslly drags Geraldine Aron off for an interview. "A divorced woman gets a visit from a genie who says he will grant her three wishes on condition that whatever she asks, her former husband will receive a hundred fold. She grits her teeth and says, OK: wish number one - could I have heaps of sex appeal. And the genie says, it is done but your ex is now totally irresistible. Wish number two: Could you make me wealthy? It is done but your ex is now mega rich. Wish number three: Could I have a teeny, teeny, teeny little stroke?" First things first. Geraldine Aron is a Galway girl original ly. She is also a sweetheart. Too nice for her own good and too nice to be in this nasty business. One gets the feeling that on arriving at any given location, she should immediately be issued with minders of the most vicious and bone-breaking sort to protect her from her own good nature. If they snap her up in Hollywood she is going to need Samuel L Jackson and a bunch of brothers just to have breakfast. The US Marine Corps may be required to see her through the rest of the day. That being said...she ain't quite the pussycat she looks. This pushover has elegantly concealed claws and a full com pliment of teeth. Read the work. The work in question is My Brilliant Divorce which receives its premiere from Druid in the Town Hall from Wednesday November 28 for two weeks (previews from Friday 23). This is going to be something rather special, so book your tickets now. The show is directed Tony Award winning artistic director Garry Hynes (another Galway girl) and stars the remarkable Glenne Headly (an American girl) who is a founding member of Chigago's influential Steppenwolf Theatre Co. Among other things Headly has been Emmy nominated for Lonesome Dove and Bastard out of Carolina and played opposite Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy and Michael Caine (and Steve Martin) in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Chuck in Demi Moore and Bruce Willis in Mortal Thoughts and you are beginning to get the picture. Forthcoming films include What's the Worst That Can Happen with Danny DeVito. We're talking world class quality ensemble here. Three very serious and very talented women. Men may not come out of this very well. Hynes and Aron go back a long way, and all in Galway. Their first outing was in the Seventies when Druid were just out of UCG DramSoc and fea tured the gifted Marie Mullen (Tony Award 'Best Actress' winner) in Aron's first play Bar and Ger, a poignant and decep tively simple script which grew out of Aro's own attempts to deal with the tragic death of her brother. Together they went on to present A Galway Girl which has since shown all over the world and the script has won an Edinburgh Fringe First, the All-Ireland One-Act, and the Prix Italia. Her other plays include Same Old Moon, The Stanley Parkers, The Donaghue Sisters, a raft of radio and TV scripts and a mantelpiece tee tering with awards. I know we are spoiled rotten in Galway, but this is ridicu lous! Still, however good, 'why a Yank actress'? Aron explains, "I conferred a lot with Garry and we could not find an actress of the right age who was capable of, really, stand-up comedy and who was a really good actress. It's a quite diffi cult mix. She had to look like a mature woman, not a young lady. I was trying to make a point that women of a certain age are still alive, have desires and everything. I was trying to cross that Rubicon, that you can have a woman in a play and she's not either a very young woman or a granny."

INSIDE THIS WEEK
Neil H a n n o n interview 42 -> Art exhibtions 45 Glenne Headly 45 -- > J u n i o r Film Fleadh 46
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David Kitt Brian K e n n e d y Ron 47 Sexsmith

This, as you may readily imagine, plays merry hell with the monitors attached to Angela's serially philandering ex-husband and prompts her to finally remove her wedding ring and contemplate having it made into earrings. As with a deal of Aron's work mere are autobiographical elements which allow her to write with a truly convincing sincerity and a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue. With 20-something plays under her narrowAngela, the heroine of the u aisled belt she has had a stirnew play, is neither, "I decided fry mixture of laughter and it wasn't a good time to discuss tears watching what people do reconciliation. Vanessa [her to and with her work, so her daughter] arrived and I went off praise for and confidence in to do Roundhead's chores. Garry Hynes is unstinting and When I returned later with a tub heartfelt. of chopped herring, I entered "Garry understands every intensive care to be greeted by line you write, absolutely gets the sight of a woman pressing it. That is such a miracle. So her lips to the monitors on his validating. Sometimes she'll put near naked torso, moving you on the spot by making you steadily in a southerly direction, explain something to an actor. I and muttering endearments in a know that Garry knows ... and I foreign tongue. know that I instinctively wrote "Mirjana - a textbook exam a line... it's good for me to have ple of anorexia nervosa - had to do that. It keeps me on my dressed in a hurry. Unless no toes. Sometimes I have to make bra, a shrunken tee shirt and something up because I don't leggings with high heeled san know what I wrote, it just felt dals are the usual get-up for right. I wait anxiously for the hospital visits in the Balkans." critics to tell me what Tve writ

ten, half the time. I remember once somebody writing that Galway Girl had been carefully written so that it came to 33 minutes which was the 33 years of the marriage [in the play] and I thought 'Wow!, how clever am I?' Sometimes you watch a play being destroyed by people who just don't get it. They are not allowed to cut without permission but..! Why are people frightened by sim plicity? Garry loves simplicity." My Brilliant Divorce is a departure from Aron's decep tive simplicity on a number of levels. It's longer than most of the others, for one thing, and it has even fewer people on stage. Judging by the script (which is being cut and adapted as we speak) it is also howlingly funny, deeply poignant and very clever. Angela is an awe somely challenging role for any actor and My Brilliant Divorce for any director; but these are no ordinary people taking on the challenge. This has the makings of something truly magical and memorable. There are no cur rent plant to tour it, so the Town Hall in Galway is your first and last chance. "Wasn't I easy pleased?".

plaintively enquires the hero of A Galway Girl, "all I ever wanted was a fry." This inter view was conducted with a seri ously tired author who fared far better than her creation in Pierre's of Quay Street. Good food made a happy and good person even happier and better. Didn't do this writer any harm either! If Geraldine Aron hadn't lived the rich and full life she has and wasn't so evidently capable of taking care of herself (and business) I really would be looking for Samuel L's phone number with a view to ensuring that no-one would mess with such a nice person. A parting g a g . from the script, "OK. You're trapped with Charles Manson. Adolph Hitler, a lawyer. But only two bullets in your gun. (Pause). Use both on the lawyer. Just to be sure." Many, many years ago Geraldine Aron's mother had a new straw hat blown off into the Corrib while crossing O'Briens Bridge and she cur rently has an apartment with a view over same. She also has an astonishing little digital camera which will allow her to record this view. She is absurd ly happy.