Ireland: Where the Song and Dance Began...and Long May the Dance Go On
By CATHOLINE BUTLER
VANCOUVER - The audience is hushed, the theatre is dark, the music begins and the backdrop on the stage is the windswept tower of the Rock of Cashel. From out of the shadows emerges the seanachie...Will Millar. He recites a poem: “there’s a Celtic wind blowing in off the sea tonight, an emerald breeze that ruffles memories of long nights by the fires of Ireland.”
And then, Ian Millar begins to sing the Song for Ireland. Where it starts off “walking all the day, near tall towers where falcons build,” there is an aerial shot coming over the Cliffs of Moher with a falcon flying high above it. Then, cut to O’Brien tower... it’s a breathtaking opening.
That’s the opening scene in Will Millar’s new show Ireland: Where the Song and Dance Began. The show will be launched on October 16 in Duncan, B.C. with stops all across Western Canada.
When we think of Will Millar, we think of an impish Irish leprechaun, wearing a cap and playing a penny whistle. And he is all of those, but he is also a powerful seanachie – a storyteller. In the show Ireland: Where the Song and Dance Began, he sings very little, playing the role of the seanachie and telling the story of the Irish from the terrible times of the famine, when they left Ireland on coffin ships, to their impact over the years in North America.
Will Millar, the former Irish Rover, recently spoke to The Celtic Connection about his new show. He is is so excited about the production that when he starts to talk about it ... it would take a freight train to slow him down.
“To tell you the truth Catholine, I’ve been 10 years putting this show together,” he said. “After I broke with the Irish Rovers, I formed a new band called Rogues and Romancers, and after about five years, I said, ‘you know, this is just a rehash of the Rovers and it’s not what I want’.”
He continued, “I was sitting have a few jars with Dennis Brown, a promoter in Australia, and he said, ‘let’s write a show’. So, he and I sort of put the show together. I was nervous as hell, but you know, it worked. Every year Dennis would call me and say ‘okay, let’s do Ireland again this year’. Everywhere we went with the show there were great reviews, I’ve never had reviews like it, they loved it!”
Will describes the show and history of Irish music saying, “We gave the audience a little taste of Riverdance, a little taste of The Irish Rovers and The Clancy Brothers. I do a bit called Ballad Brew, where I explain how Irish music changed forever in the 1960s from the Mother Macrees and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
“It came about when The Clancy Brothers, dressed in Aran sweaters, bounded out onto the stage during the Ed Sullivan Show and started singing all these Wild Colonial Boy songs. Then The Irish Rovers followed, then The Dubliners and The Wolfe Tones.
“We have images of the Clancy’s and The old Rovers and we do a medley where the audience sings along to The Black Velvet Band. So you see, you can get it all in with this kind of a show...it’s great.”
But Will is quick to point out that this show is not watered down Irish music. Ireland: The Land of Song and Dance brings together a cast of the highest calibre traditional entertainers. For instance, Martin Nolan is one of Ireland’s foremost uilleann pipers and Irish whistle players. The beautiful, Chicago-born, Kathleen Keane is a child prodigy on the whistle who also plays fiddle.
Limerick-born, Sheila Ryan, plays Irish harp and guitar and sings her beautiful old-Irish songs in the native Irish tongue. Will’s cousin, Ian Millar, has inherited all the rich vocal tones, having grown up in a house full of music.
Dublin-born Irish dancer Philip Brady has toured extensively with Michael Flately’s Lord of the Dance and he now owns and teaches at Brady Academy of Irish Dance in Winnipeg. Philip is accompanied in the show by a team of charming world-class dancers. Davey Walker, who has been a close associate of Will Millar since the Rovers, plays keyboard and squeezebox.
“Throughout the show,” Will said, “I point up how so many of America’s traditions and customs had their roots in Ireland. I relate how these old boys came out from Ireland and made their way to the Kentucky mountains, and who do you think gave Americans moonshine whiskey? It came from the Irish poteen.
“Then the girls come out dressed in hoedown hats and they do a hoedown dance to an Irish reel and we sing, Come Down From The Mountains Katy Daly. We show some great pictures of Irish poteen stills in Ireland and then the same counterparts in the Kentucky mountains.”
He continues, “we do touch on the Troubles in Ireland. I do a poem written after the Omagh bombing and I’ve got a picture of Bernadette Devlin with a microphone at the Free Derry Wall. At the end, I say, ‘do you know what’s remembered? All those Troubles are mostly forgotten, but the thing that the world remembers is the music, the dance, the poetry and I end up by saying ‘and long may the dance go on’.
“And the dancers come out and do a big dance. It’s hopeful endings like that...that say Ireland with all of its wars, turmoils and famine...in the end, St. Patrick’s Day is one of the most successful ethnic holidays in the world right now. And why is that?...because this is where the song and dance began.”
Laughingly, Will said, “you know Catholine, I should be retiring. I’ve been at this for a lot of years. I’m the old man of the show now. The rest of the cast are all young people, a whole new generation of Irish entertainers, and it’s very refreshing to be with them and to travel with them and to do a show that I think has such substance.
“Finally, I feel satisfied that what I am doing on stage is good, not that I thought it was bad before, don’t get me wrong, but I felt that I was lacking something. I wanted something substantial and I’m very proud of this show. I’m more proud of this show than I’ve been of anything in years.”
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For more information about Will Millar’s show, Ireland: Where the Song and Dance began, see the back cover of this issue. Check the front cover for a chance to win free give-away tickets to some selected shows.
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