Pakie O’Callaghan celebrates storyteller Eamon Kelly

The talent, comedy and subversiveness of Eamon Kelly is saluted in mimic Pakie O'Callaghan's tribute to the late actor

Tue, 13 Aug, 2024 - 02:00

Colette Sheridan

While his contemporaries were interested in rock ‘n roll as teenagers, the actor, writer and mimic, Pakie O’Callaghan’s hero was the storyteller and actor, Eamon Kelly.

O’Callaghan, who grew up in Glasheen, used to listen with his father to Kelly on Din Joe’s Take the Floor on RTÉ Radio and later, would tune into Kelly’s own programme, The Rambling House. He was enthralled by Kelly’s performances in his one-man shows such as In My Father’s Time, Bless Me Father and Stonemad. Now, O’Callaghan is hoping to develop a new audience for these stories in his show, A Celebration of The Stories of Eamon Kelly.

A talented mimic, O’Callaghan will not however be mimicking Kelly but rather presenting his tales true to the material. They are guaranteed to raise plenty of laughs, says O’Callaghan. Kelly (1914-2001) was born in Gneevequilla near Rathmore on the Cork/Kerry border. He received a Tony Award nomination for his starring role in the 1964 play, Philadelphia Here I Come. His family only agreed to O’Callaghan’s show as long as he respects the material.

Growing up, O’Callaghan was also interested in the Irish poet and playwright, Sigerson Clifford and the Scottish Canadian writer Robert Service. Along with Kelly’s work, he used to learn off the words of these writers.

O’Callaghan didn’t memorise for performance purposes. He just had a deep interest in the work of these writers: “I was never into music. It was soccer and these stories, a peculiar fascination.”

When RTÉ Radio’s Liveline (to which O’Callaghan contributes on the Funny Fridays programme) asked him to take part in a programme devoted to celebrating international storytellers, O’Callaghan performed an Eamon Kelly story. Subsequently, he was asked to take part in two half-hour radio shows on Kelly’s work. But that didn’t happen.

“That’s how it started. Eamon’s son, Eoin, said the family was reluctant to see the stories performed but they wanted to keep his memory alive. Also, I was in Dublin last year and went to see the Brendan Behan play, The Quare Fellow; Sive by John B Keane and The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey. These are the giants of Irish theatre. But for me, Kelly is an inventive character, a great writer and creator. I think he’s neglected. I have enormous time for his work. He was an extraordinary talent.”

O’Callaghan goes so far as to say he thinks Kelly is better than John B Keane. “John B Keane wrote some fantastic main characters. I’m not in any way attacking him. But to me, Kelly got under the skin of a lot of the issues that impacted rural Ireland, especially the move from rural life to the cities; misogyny and the imbalance in the relationships between men and women. And he always did it with a comic sting.”

If you “drill down” into Kelly’s stories, he was “quite subversive” says O’Callaghan. “He sought always to undermine the power of the Catholic Church and to point out the effect of the abuse of power by the clergy. Emigration was another theme he dealt with. He had an amazing ability to do it in a kind of comic way, a bit like Tommy Tiernan. That kind of subtle undermining is probably much stronger than ranting. To me, Kelly was very clever and subtle. He was such a brilliant recorder of the social history of his time.”

Frank Twomey and Pakie O'Callaghan at Cork International Airport preparing for Farewell To Santa Ponsa.

O’Callaghan is best known for his astute impersonations of politicians. Political satire is his métier. He was also one half of the comedic Santa Ponsa shows, along with the late Frank Twomey, that used to be performed at the Everyman before touring the country. The nationwide tours were a result of pitching the shows to the TV programme, Dragon’s Den, as a sort of entrepreneurial venture. It was very successful but O’Callaghan says that the outcome was a mixed blessing: “We were being dragged all over the country on unplanned tours. One weekend, the last time we did Santa Ponsa, we were in Sligo on a Friday, Cahersiveen on Saturday and Blessington on Sunday. We couldn’t continue like that. The bookings were all coming in randomly. We couldn’t structure the tours.”

O’Callaghan and Twomey went back to the drawing board to develop a new idea. “But Frank got very sick and we just had to abandon it because he essentially wasn’t able to perform. I miss him fiercely.”

But the memories live on and O’Callaghan, at 72, has a new lease of life, performing the work of his favourite storyteller.