During his term as artistic head at the Abbey, Alan Simpson directed a play by Constantine FitzGibbon called The Devil at Work. It was set in heaven and the theme was the creation of the world. Some of us actors played parts outside our range – I was the Archangel Gabriel. I don’t think the hair hanging down in ringlets suited my cast of countenance. One ancient wag said I reminded him of a female newsreader he knew on 2RN (Ireland’s first radio station, which broadcast from Denmark Street).
Maitias, from Paris, designed the celestial setting, and very beautiful it was too. One critic said, ‘it was most elegant, most spectacular and a joy to look at’. At the opening the stage seemed resting on clouds with angels flying about. These heavenly beings were young people suitably costumed on swings. Into the angelic merry-go-round, falling from the skies of an upper heaven, dropped the Archangel Gabriel and the Archangel Michael, played by Geoff Golden. Before the curtain Geoff and I were hoisted high into the flies. Under our finery we wore parachute harnesses. A thin wire, invisible to the audience, was hooked into the back of the harness and we were winched aloft.
It was absolutely essential that we sat correctly into the tackling or agonies lay ahead. It was also very important that there was no twist in the wire, or the actor would spin around and back again. Our heads spun too in the dark upper world of ropes, catwalks and fly bars. The distance to the ground instilled terror, but what was most chilling was a plywood cut-out ground-row directly below; in an accident we were certain to be decapitated.
We were sent aloft ages before the curtain and we seemed to be hours dangling up there. At the dress rehearsal the director came to the front seats and, looking up, proclaimed that our angelic feet were showing. Heavenly hour! We had to be winched higher, which made the adrenalin race like mercury in our glands. Prior to this Geoff had been suspended without pay from the company for some misdemeanour, and on opening night he turned his head and said to me, ‘Suspended for a month, and on my first night back I am suspended again!’
The gong sounded, and on the third reverberating stroke the curtain rose and Geoff and I floated down (I forget now if we spread our wings) into a cherubim- and seraphim-filled paradise and alighted on a rostrum upstage. Hands came from behind a masking drape and unhooked us from the wire. God, were we happy to find our feet on firm ground as we walked down and mingled with the other angels. With music, lighting, costumes and a heavenly setting, it was a wonderful sight. A member of the audience told me afterwards that Geoff’s descent and mine looked like two figures from the famous painting of the Assumption going the wrong way.
On a bugle call from Gabriel the heavenly host got busy. Architect and engineer angels began work at the drawing board mapping out our wonderful world. The seas were soon filled with fish and the earth populated with animals. The Garden of Eden was created, and the last thing we see at the close of the play is Eve throwing that unfortunate, for us, apple to Adam.
In between there was much activity, and as each animal was planned, a painted cut-out of the creature was run on a wire upstage with a witty comment from the angels on each invention. On beholding a strange shape whizzing across one angel inquired, ‘What’s this?’ and was told, ‘That’s a yak – useful for crosswords.’
There was also the angels’ revolt. Desmond Cave played Lucifer, and Harry Brogan, as Zerubabbe, was one of the dirtiest looking devils you could wish to see. The Irish Times described Alan Simpson’s production as excellent and the Abbey Company as grand. David Nowlan continued: ‘Eric Sweeney’s music and Leslie Scott’s lighting add to the air of sophistication with which the whole production is endowed, and it is for this sophistication – not all that commonly seen in theatrical terms in the Abbey – that the evening is ultimately to be commended. Had we been told, even a year ago, that we would have seen its like in the Abbey, we might not have believed it. To be believed it must be seen.’