Coppers The Musical: 'It’s like a GAA disco writ large in Dublin'
Paul Howard, creator of Coppers: the Musical.
Life was looking bleak for Paul Howard in 2012. He was a few weeks away from opening his first musical, which was about the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank. Howard – and his co-producer Darren Smith – was spending most of his time in meetings with solicitors instead of in the rehearsal room. Despite pressure to kill the show, which included threats from Anglo’s former CEO and chairman Seán FitzPatrick, the pair decided to go ahead.
“We were lucky not to go to jail,” says Howard. “I remember before one meeting to talk about the legality – or otherwise – of the show, and the likely implications for us, Darren turned to me and said, ‘Jeez, we should have just done Coppers: The Musical.”
What started as a joke came to pass. In 2018, Howard premiered Copper Face Jacks: The Musical, which is set inside the walls of the legendary Dublin nightclub on Harcourt Street (which opened in 1996). His second foray into musical theatre has been a smash hit.
“Darren and myself were very familiar with Coppers,” says Howard. “We knew it was an Irish social institution. Unlike Anglo Irish Bank, it’s an institution that has happy associations. We thought: why not do a homage to it on stage? Kind of like a Moulin Rouge with carvery and new cut denim.”
The plot hinges around a love triangle: Noeleen, a comely maiden who has moved to the capital for work; her jilted fiancé, Mossy; and Gino Wildes, a cad, a car clamper and captain of Dublin’s Gaelic football team. The cast features Johnny Ward, returning as Gino; and Mrs Brown’s Boys star Fiona O’Carroll.
“The thing about Coppers, the nightclub, is that it’s like a GAA club disco writ large in Dublin,” says Howard. “You could be in Tullamore. It’s like a local disco, but in Dublin. The door policy isn’t fussy. If you have a gang of girls down from Donegal, or a gang of lads up from Cork for a match, they know they are gonna get in. They knew they aren’t going to get fragmented, and they’ll get in wearing their GAA colours.
“For people who move to Dublin from various parts of the country – gardaí, nurses, teachers, or in the case of our heroine, a claims worker in the VHI – it’s a little piece of home. It has that folksy, homely feel. The DJs aren’t pretentious when it comes to playlists. Sweet Child o’ Mine could be followed by The Lion Sleeps Tonight. All these great floor fillers. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
Howard was a regular in the club back in his twenties. “I loved the fact that no one judged you. I couldn't get into Reynards and Lillie’s Bordello until I became known as the voice behind Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. I got turned away routinely from both night spots. I was always too ugly to get in. There's only so many different excuses you can take from bouncers: ‘Your shoes are too casual.’ ‘Don't know your face.’ ‘You have to be a member.’ After a while, you realise they think you’re just not going to aesthetically enhance this nightclub.”
Before putting his musical on stage, Howard had to get clearance from the owner of Coppers, Cathal Jackson, as he needed his imprimatur to use the Copper Face Jacks trademark. Jackson was unsure. He said he wanted to give the go-ahead but he wasn’t a theatre or live music man, and he wasn’t sure if it would make or break what was a thriving brand. Jackson agreed to come for a read through – along with six or seven trusted friends – to make a judgement call.
“The read through was a hundred times more tense than normal,” says Howard. “Actors are normally nervous anyway at a read through. I'm nervous because I've written a show and I don't know what jokes are funny and what jokes aren’t funny. This was this extra tension.
“Cathal and his friends arrived in. They seemed to be mostly gardaí. Big guys. You could tell by the cut of them – like, ‘the guards are here in plain clothes’. One of them was [former Dublin football manager] Paul ‘Pillar’ Caffrey. They all stood against the wall. We were at the table doing the table read. Honestly we were all terrified to look over to see what they were making of it.
“About 10 minutes in, I looked up and all I could see were red faces and shoulders going up and down. They were cracking up laughing, including Cathal. We got to the end of Act One and Cathal came over and he said, ‘I don’t need to hear anymore. I love it. Go for it.’ That was when it really became a thing.”
Howard’s Coppers musical is back for its third run this summer. The public have been voting with its feet, lapping up its laugh-out-loud numbers like the coming-out song I’m gay, I’m GAA and Whoops, I’m back in Copper Face Jacks. Howard, who is a four-time Irish Book Awards winner, is blasé about snooty critical reactions to the show.
“You don't write a show like this for the reviews. Popular theatre is never well received critically. A lot of theatre critics are snobs about this. I saw a couple of theatre critics at a show recently and they looked like they’d come from somewhere where something terrible had happened. I can't remember the last time a comedy won a theatre award. I don’t know if it’s beyond their ken, but it's just not for them.
“I've seen shows where I'm sitting there ticking off why lines are funny but people aren’t actually laughing. I would hate to write something like that, to be in a theatre and nobody’s laughing. I saw a Richard Brinsley Sheridan comedy a few years ago. We all sat there. Nobody laughed. Then everybody left, talking about how funny it was. If comedy doesn’t provoke a laugh in you – for me – it’s not a comedy.”
Howard says he wrote the musical to make people laugh. “The only review that really matters is when you’re sitting in the theatre and are people laughing? I didn’t write this show hoping that theatre critics would enjoy it. You write it for an audience. I would much rather have laughter from an audience and violence from a theatre critic – than the other way around.”
- Copper Face Jacks: The Musical is at the Olympia in Dublin until August 20; and Cork Opera House, August 23 – 28. See www.corkoperahouse.ie
