View from the Green Room: A Memory of Dubliners – Whatson

REVIEW Seven Drunken Nights at the Theatre Royal

It was a sepia-toned evening of nostalgia for a packed house on the Mall who certainly appreciated the craic that the original Dubliners forged over several decades with an audience that never tired of them.

The Seven Drunken Nights tour strives to entertain and the bar decor is stylish and well thought out.

Shelves filled with pub memorabilia and a mock bar with counter, stools, tables and chairs fill the scene and create the impression that a Donoghue’s Bar session is underway… well… session.

Images of Dublin in an older, somewhat rarer time scroll across the rear screen and it all helps to create a sense of nostalgia for what is lost and gone.

It’s all partying and good humour, and the grinding poverty of the 1950s, when some 700,000 Paddies and Patricias fled the idyllic Irish island of Dev in search of a better life, is only hinted at in ballads like McAlpine’s Fusiliers.

The band, consisting of talented musicians and good singers, works very hard to captivate the audience and get the room singing, clapping and swaying right from the start.

Much of the narration falls to Ged Graham, 76, who plays banjo/five-string guitar and sings brilliantly. And wasn’t he just the cat with the cream when he introduced us to his grandson Adam Evans (guitar/vocals), who, as Ged tells the young ladies in the audience, is “still single and unattached.”

Ged has told the story of the Dubliners with an affection as sincere as the love of a friend. All the original members – Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, John Sheehan, Ciarán Bourke and Barney McKenna – are warmly remembered and their stories told.

Group replacements: Jim McCann, Seán Cannon, Eamonn Campbell, Paddy Reilly, Patsy Watchorn, Gerry O’Connor, among others.

Phil Coulter’s time with the band – he produced four albums and wrote a number of major songs that expanded the band’s repertoire – is also remembered.

The band plays all the Dublin hits: McAlpine’s Fusiliers, Black Velvet Band, Maids When You’re Young, Monto, Dirty Old Town, The Town I Love So Well, Wild Rover etc.

At one point the band released one album a year, with Revolution being the best of them.

“Seven Drunken Nights” reached number six in the UK charts and was banned in Ireland. RTÉ unofficially banned their music from 1967 to 1971, just as the band’s popularity began to spread to continental Europe and the United States after their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Dubliners were loud and larger than life, and attracted an audience that loved Irish ballads. They sought fame by appearing on stage with cases of large bottles in their hands, but in reality this was never more than a publicity stunt. The Dubliners were talented musicians and singers, and brilliant storytellers.

The Seven Drunken Nights tour was polished, professional and entertaining and the audience stood and applauded at the end of a great value evening.