Weddings, Wakes 'N Whiskey

By Martin P. Kelly

This collection of plays celebrates that wave of Irish people who came to America at the turn of the 20th century.
As the Irish greenhorns helped fight for America in World War 1, so too their children also joined with the immigrants' children from other European countries in World War 2 to prove they were truly a vital part of the melting pot that was and remains America's strength.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491792070

Martin P. Kelly

The Author Martin P. Kelly was artistic director of the Bridge Theater in Whitehall (NY) from1999 to 2009 on the 100-year old Champlain Canal vehicular structure on which the theater was built. Of the seven plays he wrote for the theater company during that period, five of them dealt with Whitehall during the American Revolution. These plays were among the 17 he has written during his career, including the three in this book. In addition, he also wrote nine musical revues during his 10 years at Bridge Theater that featured the music of a leading composer in each production. He has also served as drama critic for 24 years with the Albany Times Union (NY) and reviewed more than 2,500 plays and musicals in the Albany region, on Broadway, in Canada as well as in London and Moscow. As a director, producer and actor, he has staged and/or appeared in more than 200 productions in his 50 years in theater. Of the 17 plays he has written, two have been presented off-Broadway while the others have been presented in regional and dinner theaters throughout Northeastern New York State.

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Copyright © 2016 Martin P. Kelly.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9206-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9207-0 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/31/2016

Contents

Home to the Greenhorn

Rememberin’ Molly

Wry Twist

Front cover sketches by Richard Harte

Back cover photo by Joann Hoose

For groups or producers planning to present these plays, it could be interesting to their audiences to present them in the above order over a summer season or during a regular theater season from September to May.

Since the plays are written basically about one set of characters, an audience can follow the adventures of these leading characters and also get to know the actors playing their lives over a period of approximately 12 years through good times and bad.

However, the individual plays can and do stand on their own as a pleasurable piece of theater. Each has its own beginning, middle and end.

For more information about royalties and scripts, contact

Patrick J. Timmins Esq. at [e-mail]

Dedication

These plays are respectfully dedicated to my parents who came to America in the first decade of the 20th century. They met in this country and married.

As their first-born, I consider myself blessed by the great opportunities that have been afforded me by the immigration of Martin J. Kelly and Roseanne Mawe to this country. Inspired by the tales of their youth in Ireland and the stories of their immigrant friends I met as a child, these plays have been the result..

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A Special Thanks to:

Margaret M. Kelly, my daughter, who has assisted me for a number of years in producing my plays and those written by other playwrights in regional and dinner theater productions. She has also provided invaluable help in proof-reading my historical plays of which she has a special interest, especially in her writing of a one-woman play, Hostess To History, about Dolly Madison in the period following the death of her husband, President James Madison

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The three plays in this book capture the Irish immigrants’ experiences of 100 years ago as they sought to gain a foothold in America with humor, hard work and determination to be part of their new country. The plays are fictional experiences given these characters from the stories I heard from my immigrant parents and their friends.

Mainly unschooled and with little urban living in their native Ireland, the first stop for these newcomers was usually New York City where they adjusted and became part of the melting pot experience.

The children of these Irish natives assimilated with the children of other European immigrants of their time to eventually fight a Second World War as Americans.

Foreword

The three plays in this book represent the comings and goings of a group of Irish immigrants who found refuge in the boarding house run by a strong-willed widow, Molly Casey, in New York City during the first two decades of the early 20th century. It was a time of Irish migration prior to the Irish rebellion in the early 1920s.

Once settled in this Casey boarding house, these immigrants rarely discussed this fight for freedom from England by the Irish Republican Army since a World War was consuming most of Europe at this time as America was being drawn into the fight.

The lives of Mrs. Casey, her father, a young daughter and a cousin were more involved in the everyday problems concerning the male boarders who worked the docks, drank to relieve sore backs, and attended the weddings and wakes that became part of their lives,

Much of this material was gathered while growing up during the 1930s as the first born of Irish immigrants who met here in America at a Gaelic football game and eventually married.

From these stories told by my parents over the years and told as well by their immigrant friends, I am indebted and was motivated to tell them in a fictitious form that hopefully captures the humor and the poignancy of Irish life in America during that period.

For example, my maternal grandmother, a widowed Irish immigrant, took in boarders to support herself and her two daughters. The younger was patterned after my mother while her older sister, my aunt whom I never met, became a Dominican nun and was assigned to a West Coast school to teach music.

Meanwhile my father came to America not able to read or write but with a sense of humor that was contagious. He gained work on the New York City west side docks and lived with fellow workers at a rooming house run by a widow who also had daughters, three in fact.

One can find counterparts to my mother and father in these characters I have created while Molly stemmed from my maternal grandmother, a woman I never had the pleasure of meeting since she died from the world-wide outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1917, eight years before I was born.

Imagination is a wonderful gift for which I am grateful to have gained from my parents’ genes, because it brings me closer to these delightful people with their quirks, foibles, and tall tales who created a sense of memory for me, and gives me pride in having been able to give them a voice beyond their lifetimes.

Martin P. Kelly

Home to the Greenhorn

A comedy in two acts

by

Martin P. Kelly

First performed 1974

Copyright 2016

Cast of Characters

(In order of Appearance)

Barney BradyMid-twenties, cynical, disappointed in love, an imbiber

Michael RyanMid- twenties, a close friend of Barney and soon-to-be bridegroom,

Mumbo MalonePeacemaker for Brady and Ryan. He stutters, hence his name.

Molly CaseyA fortyish widow with a will of iron and short of patience,

John ConcannonMolly’s father who helps as much as he can with her boarders

Eileen CaseyMolly’s 14-year-old daughter with a rebellious nature.

Stephen SweeneyA fortyish boarder who takes great pride in his education which helps him as a Wall Street elevator operator.

Danny RyanThe brother of Michael, who’s just arrived as the greenhorn from Ireland.

Norah MatthewsMolly’s 30-year-old cousin who helps around the house.

Peter KennedyA thirtyish boarder who’s an A & P clerk and an admirer of Norah.

Mrs. ConnersA woman who has tasted the cares of the world.

Act 1, Scene 1

(It is late spring, 1912. The curtain opens on a living room of a boarding house on the west side of New York City. It is about 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and there is only a small lamp lighted in the room. A door opening to the street is down stage left and a dining room can be seen up center. At stage right is the kitchen door and upper right there’s a staircase leading to the rooms on the next two floors.

(After a short while there are voices heard at the front door that opens to reveal three young men, in their mid-twenties;. Two of them are inebriated and the other of them is attempting to silence them. They are Barney Brady who is singing; a second is Michael Ryan who is a prospective bridegroom; and the third is Mumbo Malone who is upset at the behavior of his two friends. He is the eternal peacemaker.)

BARNEY (Singing to no particular tune) Oh, Michael lad, enjoy your freedom for soon you’ll be wed and then it’ll be early to bed.

MUMBO Bar-bar-bar—ney, you’re making, too…too much…..noise.

BARNEY What’s noise to men who are free and young and. full of life.

MUMBO Still, it’s two… two… o’clock in the mor…. morning.

BARNEY Speak up, Mumbo! You’re a big boy now and needn’t be frightened of your friends.

MICHAEL (In a daze from the liquor) Yes, Mumbo, do speak up, or forever hold your peace.

BARNEY (Laughs) That’s what they’ll be saying next Sunday, sure enough. (Mock seriousness) "Speak up or forever hold your peace."

MICHAEL No man’ll challenge my right to marry my Noreen. She’s mine and I defy the world to take her from me.

BARNEY Oh, them’s the fine sentiments for a man who’s about to give up his freedom to tie himself to the apron strings of a woman.

MICHAEL What are you saying about Noreen? What apron strings? I’ll be the man in this family, I will. (Emphatically) And she knows it, she does!

MUMBO Sure, sure, Mi…M… Michael. But…but don’t make so much….noi….noise or you’ll wake the house.

BARNEY (Raising his voice) Let them all wake up, and toast the bridegroom to be. It’s a sorry night when you can’t celebrate a man’s preparing to move into a state of holy matrimony.

MICHAEL You can be sure it’ll be no more of this for me. You two will have to find someone else to fight your fights and carry you home.

BARNEY You never carried me home on your best day, you didn’t. But no matter, we’ll have your brother to join in our toasts.

MICHAEL There’ll be none of that for him. He’s only a young lad and he’ll have to toe the mark if he’s to help our mom and dad back home.

BARNEY He’ll do better than you, I’ll bet. And he won’t be running off with the first skirt that swishes by him, he won’t!

MICHAEL When he gets off the boat tonight, he’ll be the provider and free me to raise my own family. I’ve done my duty these past four years and now it’s his turn.

MUMBO Good, Michael, now…now let’s get…get up to bed

BARNEY Don’t go shushing us, Mumbo, or you’ll be sorry for it.

MUMBO Mrs. Casey’ll throw us out. It’s..it’s fi…fine for Michael here. He’s mo…moving out next week. But, we’ve got to live here aft..aft…afterwards.

MICHAEL (Singing) Mumbo’ll live after us, he will, he will.

MUMBO This is… is a good…good board…boarding house, and 1 wouldn’t wa-wa—want to be moving out…out of here with your tearing up Mrs. Casey like that.

BARNEY Not to worry Mumbo, my boy! Mrs. Casey is the kindest, most understanding boarding mistress there is in this here city.

MICHAEL (Laughs) Oh, Barney, and now 1 know you’re drunk, you are. Mrs. Casey is the least of all those things.

(There is movement on the staircase and Mrs. Casey, an imposing woman in her 40s appears, followed by her father from whom she didn’t get her stern nature. A young girl also appears. She’s the 17-year-old daughter of Mrs. Casey, the stern woman.)

MRS. CASEY And what in God’s name are the three of you doing shouting and singing at this hour of the morning? I run a respectable boarding house and not a half-way house for drunken rowdies.

BARNEY Oh, and that you do, Mrs. Casey, the very finest boarding house. And good evening to you, Mr. Concannon, and to you Miss Casey.

MRS. CASEY It’s not good evening. It’s more like good morning, Sunday morning at that, with the three of you carousing like tinkers.

BARNEY Oh, Mrs. Casey, ma’m! It was a night to celebrate, what with Michael here due to get married next Sunday. We were toasting his good fortune all the evening.

MRS. CASEY A lot of good fortune it’ll be for the poor girl he’s marryin’.

MICHAEL (Aroused) Noreen’s the girl that I love and we’ll be happy the rest of our lives.

MRS. CASEY Then you’ll have to be changing your ways pretty soon if she’s to be happy. I could tell her a thing or two about you!

CONCANNON (The peacemaker) Now, Molly, don’t be getting yourself excited. I’ll see that the lads get off to bed.

MRS. CASEY Father, don’t be putting me off. Give them a minute with you and you’ll be one of their buddies.

CONCANNON Oh, now Molly, I’ve helped you all I can with the house. And I can handle a few lads with a bit of drink in them.

MUMBO We’re sor…sorry Mrs….Mrs. Casey. It was just an…an accident that the boy, boys seem to be un..un..under the weather.

MRS. CASEY I suppose they were hit with a brewery truck and the broken beer kegs washed over them.

BARNEY Now, that might have happened too, don’t you know!

MRS. CASEY It’s a good thing for you that my Patrick isn’t alive and here to deal with you.

CONCANNON Now Molly, don’t go reminding yourself about sad things.

MRS. CASEY Would you believe it? A runaway fire horse did him in. Killed him quicker than a gun, it did. Well, the money the city paid me is what bought this boarding house. So, I’ll not have the likes of