‘Irish’ phobia became luck of the Irish

Sydney
2 June 2002

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‘Irish’ phobia became luck of the Irish

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‘Irish’ phobia became luck of the Irish

By Sholto Macpherson

Michael Forde (pictured) hated everything Irish when he came to Australia with his parents.

He had been born and raised in England and was embarrassed about his parents’ Celtic heritage.

“I never played the accordion,” he says.

But now he has to reinvent himself every night with an Irish accent, Irish body language and all the outward trappings of the archetypal Irishman.

Michael has to transform himself into Milo, the central character in Milo’s Wake, a play he wrote with his wife Margery.

It’s a play that owes much to the background he tried to disown as a boy.

He was a self-conscious 13-year-old when he began to acquire his Aussie accent at Brisbane’s Villanova College, where he studied under what he regarded as a strict regimen imposed by the Augustinian brothers.

This new, hot country, he says, seemed much fiercer than the environment he had left behind in London.

And the Catholic school he had attended in Britain did not share the enthusiasm for corporal punishment that he found at Villanova.

“Australian education in the 1960s was a little backward,” says Michael.

Nonetheless, he believes he received less punishment than might have been his due because his Irish parents were popular among expatriate brothers who taught at the college in the grounds of the 19th century house, Langlands, in the Brisbane suburb of Coorparoo.

His brother, now a musician, was more conscientious, serving as altar boy in the school chapel.

Michael had mixed feelings about the college, but he was later to send his son to be educated there because “it was more politically aware than most”.

Peace education, in particular, was an indication that the Catholic college was on the right track.

Michael says his parents moved to Australia “to escape the scourge of the Irish” - an oversupply of relatives who, despite their best intentions, could suffocate rather than support. Michael estimates he has between 70 and 100 cousins.

The extensive network of Fordes and other Irish searching for work in London saw the family of four make the journey to the great South Land in the early 1960s.

But Michael’s rejection of his Irish heritage continued until 15 years ago.

His parents, who are now retired and living on the Central Coast where his father helps with the local St Vincent de Paul Society conference, had such memories of their life in Ireland that they struck a chord within him.

“As my parents were getting older, I started talking to them more,” he says.

Their conversations awakened a keen interest in all things Irish, leading to Ghosts of Something Irish, a play he and Margery wrote about the experiences of Irish men and women in Australia.

Now, almost 40 years after his arrival in Australia, Michael confronts his ancestry again in Milo’s Wake. He plays a working class Irish hero searching for success and respect in Australia, his new homeland.

Milo decides to throw his own wake, hoping to win the admir-ation of family and friends by recounting favourite exploits and triumphs from his lifetime.

Not all the reminiscing is positive, however; themes of tragedy and loss are visited when the actors confront the memories of the death of Milo’s son. The sobering reality of death and wakes contrasts with the contributions from an Irish band.

The wake is held in a pub, the centre of Irish social life, decorated with imagery that, says Michael, is instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Ireland’s superstitious traditions. Mirrors are covered and the clocks are stopped - “it’s like time out”.

Milo is surrounded by his family - wife Maura, son Ned and Ned’s girlfriend Brooke - and an Irish band, a vital ingredient to any Irish funeral. Audience members become participants in the wake as Milto talks directly to them, treating them as mates who have come to hear the stories and heap praise on their “dead” friend. In some performances audience members have been invited up on to the stage to sit and drink Guinness with the actors.

Milo’s Wake is structured in one scene, played out in real time.

Michael became Milo - reluctantly - when the actor performing the role quit to become artistic director of a theatre company.

Because writing any play is an intense process that commits the playwright’s ideas to public scrutiny, he was hesitant about facing an audience performing his own play.

Two years after its debut with Queensland’s La Boite Theatre, he has no regrets. “I am very glad I did it.”

He and Margery have been performing and writing together for 32 years after meeting on a theatre-in-education tour of NSW schools.

“We just clicked,” says Michael.

Milo’s Wake, a multi-award-winning comedy, is on a five-month national tour. It opens at Belvoir St Theatre on June 19.