The Mirage we call the 'Middle Class':
Bernard Farrell's Lovers at Versailles

"The mirage we call the 'middle class'" is, according to fellow dramatist Billy Roche's programme note for the 2002 premiere of Lovers at Versailles at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, what Bernard Farrell achieves to portray in his play, set - as most of his plays - in present-day suburban Dublin or, as Hugh Leonard once called it, the 'gin-and-tonic belt' of Dublin. "The plays of Bernard Farrell hold the mirror up to the new bourgeoisie, in the style created by Lennox Robinson and Hugh Leonard," Christopher Murray has observed: "Farrell shows the guilt behind the façade of progress, and while maintaining the emphasis on laughter and eccentricity, reveals…the anxieties behind a pretence of security."

Lovers at Versailles examines the life of three women who are left behind when shopkeeper Stephen Sullivan suddenly dies. They now have to confront life without him. His domineering wife, Clara, always suspected that Stephen had a hidden life, and now begins to piece together the truth behind the façade. His daughter, Isobel, is determined to use every opportunity to move up the social ladder, at the price of her marriage's disintegration, and Anna, Stephen's eldest and favourite daughter, who seemed content to stay at home at her father's side, without any social life to speak of outside the house, is now offered a second chance at happiness.

What made Anna leave her lover at the altar ten years earlier and choose the life of a 'spinster'? We know from a contribution to the Laguna Playhouse's production of Lovers at Versailles what inspired the author to write the play. He recalls two encounters which 'lit the fuse' for Lovers at Versailles.

One of these was occurred at a Dublin bus stop where he met an old man in his eighties. Farrell struck up a conversation, and it transpired that this inconspicuous fellow had a colourful and adventurous past. He had seen service in the Second World War on a war ship in the North Sea, was torpedoed by German U-boats, spent hours in a life-boat in icy waters, was rescued - and, after a spell in hospital, sent out on a destroyer to the South Atlantic, where he was promptly torpedoed again. He spent thirty hours in the water before a merchant ship - which was, in turn, attacked by the Luftwaffe, rescued him…

"At this point," so Bernard Farrell, "I began to wonder about two things. The first was - should I get on the bus with this man! It seemed that everywhere he went he was either torpedoed, bombed or drowned...and how safe would the bus be with him aboard? The second thought was more reasonable: who would ever suspect that this little man, so easy to ignore, would have lived such a life and have such a fund of stories and secrets."

When the bus arrived, "the doors opened and (as often happens in our new, self-absorbed, affluent society) disorder erupted as everyone rushed to get on. The man was pushed aside and, eventually, he who was first at the bus-stop, was almost last onto the bus."

Bernard Farrell says he "began to wonder about the people in our New Ireland who don't fit into the image of how we now see ourselves. Today, we no longer blame our post-colonial past on our shortcomings - because today, we are loath to admit to any shortcomings as we present ourselves to the world with a new affluence, a new confidence and a new kick-ass assurance. This is a fine and admirable reversal of attitude. However, the problem is that not all boats rise on the same tide - and what about those who are left behind?"

The other encounter happened at a school reunion dinner where an old school friend talked about his daughter Mary - "a treasure" - who looked after him when his wife was ill and in hospital. Now in her late twenties, she was "intelligent and humorous - 'the best of company', as her father told me, 'in her own quiet way'. But, he acknowledged, she didn't really fit in anywhere - 'but someday, I expect that her Knight in Shining Armour will ride in and take her away and that will be that,' he concluded, almost embarrassed."

"Somehow another fuse had been lit. In many ways, she was like the old man at the bus stop, but at the other end of the spectrum. Each was living in the New Ireland but neither was fitting in - or being welcomed in. Perhaps they were happy as such - or perhaps not. And if not, what were their lives like? Did the old man want the world to know of his experiences? Did Mary really want a Knight in Shining Armour? A play could possibly try to answer such questions."

In the view of the Irish Independent, that's what Lovers at Versailles does, 'with absolute dramatic precision, brilliant dialogue and flawless structure".

But Bernard Farrell is not without his critics. "Shallow", "irrelevant", "bland and outdated" - are some of the negative epithets hurled at his plays, which the same critics dismiss out of hand as "undemanding light comedy" or "well-crafted middle-brow entertainment". He shares this occasional critical barrage with his mentor and fellow Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. And like him, he shrugs it off. His credo is that of an intelligent entertainer: "I could never write a play, no matter how tragic, in which I didn't want the audience - as often as possible! - to fall into hilarious laughter."

We have had some of that laughter when we produced Canaries and I Do Not Like Thee, Dr Fell way back in 1984 and 1990, respectively. And so will, I'm sure, the present incumbents of the Tübingen Anglo-Irish Theatre Group.