Waterford's Theatre Royal provides ideal venue for recalling the Dubliners
Imelda May and John Sheehan recording the voiceovers for the Dubliners Encore
Tonight’s excellent 'Dubliners Encore' show is created by The Dubliners', John Sheahan who, along with Imelda May, contributes multiple commentaries and memories throughout.
With the band's original record producer Phil Coulter as Musical Director, 'The Dubliners Encore' is the official story of the band in their heyday.
Tonight’s show is a sell out, for an older generation that grew up on the folk scene of the sixties when you either liked folk or rock.
This audience sings and claps along from start to finish and my next seat partners are word perfect.
'Dubliners Encore' works hard at entertaining and the script and set is slick and well thought out.
Footage of Dublin in the somewhat rarer auld times floods across the rear screen and it all goes to create a feeling of nostalgia for what’s lost and gone forever.
It’s all butties and the craic.
The grinding poverty of the 50s, in an oppressively conservative and religious Ireland when some 700,000 Paddies and Patricias fled Dev’s idyllic Irish Isle in search of a better life, is only touched on in ballads like 'McAlpine’s Fusiliers', 'The Leavin’ of Liverpool', 'Paddy on the Railways'.
John and Imelda tell the story of the Dubliners with an affection as sincere as a brother and sister’s love.
All of the original members – Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, John Sheehan, Ciarán Bourke and Barney McKenna – are warmly remembered and their stories told. Phil Coulter’s period with the band – he produced four albums and wrote a number of major songs that expanded the band’s repertoire – is also recalled and 'Scorn Not his Simplicity', is my highlight as Luke Kelly’s character duets with Coulter on screen.
The talented group play all the Dubliner hits: 'McAlpine’s Fusileers', 'Black Velvet Band', 'Maids When You’re Young', 'Monto', 'Dirty Old Town', 'The town I love So Well', 'Wild Rover' etc.
At one stage, the Dubliners released an album a year with 'Revolution', the best of them.
'Seven Drunken Nights', reached No 6 in the UK charts and was banned in Ireland.
Even tonight, the last two verses of the risqué ballad are not sung.
RTÉ and BBC placed an unofficial ban on their music from 1967 to 1971, at the very time when the band's popularity began to spread across mainland Europe and the United States after they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The Dubliners were raucous and larger than life and attracted a following that loved Irish ballads.
I was at a Dubliners' gig in the Savoy Cinema in Cork in 1970, when two thousand people attended. To quote Brendan Behan, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity – except an obituary”.
They courted notoriety by appearing on stage with crates of large bottles to hand but, in reality, it was never more than a publicity gimmick. The Dubliners were talented musicians and singers and brilliant raconteurs.
Tonight’s commentary is slick and clever and the production is model for how tribute shows should be written and staged.
Each of the five musicians tell yarns and recall anecdotes – most of which are rooted in stories about nights and days spent boozin’ in some pub or other down the country – as they move the story of the popular band ever onwards. And along the way, we have a sensual telling of the importance of the Dubliners legacy from an Imelda May voiceover and John Sheehan’s authentic 'I-was-there' on-screen memories.
A sell-out show with all three floors singing, clapping and on their feet says that it was a good Thursday night on the Mall.
