A Wickedly Dark Tale About Marriage, Adultery, Friendship and Manners
A WILD PEOPLE
by Hugh Leonard
St. Martin’s Press
ISBN 0-312-29029-2
By SHARON GREER
In an interview in the New York-based Irish Connections magazine, the Irish playwright and writer, Hugh Leonard, noted, “My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past, we are an aggregate....unfortunately we are all the foolishness and all the crimes we did. We’re also all the kindnesses we did. I like to think of life like that.” Indeed, Leonard’s first venture into novel writing, A Wild People, could be aptly described by this very quote.
A middle-aged Dubliner, T.J. Quill, feels trapped and restless in a boring, passionless marriage to Greta, his wife of many years. He finds himself enticed into an affair with the trophy wife of an acquaintance. As the story unfolds we discover just how treacherous it will become for the naive T.J. His affair with Josie, a sexual predator, has moments of real danger throughout the story.
It’s always amazing how gullible some people can be when it concerns sexuality – and the high price they are willing to pay for it.
The double life T.J. leads is further complicated by a boom in his career. He is approached by another acquaintance, Thorn Thornton, who offers him a job as an archivist for a museum dedicated to the late, great western filmmaker, Sean O’Fearna (based on Hollywood director, John Ford).
As his life gets more complex he finds himself involved in a number of absurd schemes with equally absurd characters. A visit from the dead filmmaker’s widow has him matching wits with a flamboyant, feckless fiend. In fact, half the people T.J. Quill comes into contact with fit this nasty category.
Hugh Leonard’s literary output is vast and complex including film, memoir, criticism and
journalism. He is probably best known for his wonderful play, Da, a semi-autobiographical, two-act play, exploring the relationship of Charlie, a successful writer, with his adoptive father. Da explored themes of death, family, memory and identity and was translated on to the screen with the American actor, Martin Sheen, portraying the long-suffering son.
Last summer on a visit to Ireland, I was fortuitous enough to land in Dublin for several days. Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street had a brilliant one hour play, The Lily Lally Show, written by Leonard. A profound and wonderfully funny, fond tribute to the last great age of Dublin variety, performed solo by the fabulous actress, Barbara Brennan – it was a real treat.
A Wild People is a wickedly dark tale about marriage, adultery, friendship and manners that likes to take jabs at people’s desire to recreate themselves. It is also a very fond tribute to a lifelong love of film. It is a wonderful tale from the ever-acerbic tongue of the most commercially successful playwright in modern Ireland.
Hugh Leonard was born John Keyes Bryne in Dublin to a single mother named Annie Bryne. Adopted as a baby by a gardener and his wife, he was raised and still lives in Dalkey, Ireland.
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