Friday 10 March 2017

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven


WB Yeats

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


I have a special relationship with this poem: I encountered it while studying Yeats in college, and I loved it on first reading, so much so that I copied it out – I was into calligraphy at the time – and displayed it on my student room wall.

It speaks to me of the magic of being in love: of finding someone so amazing that you want to give them the world; you’d almost literally do anything for them. Later in my life, this love expanded to include my children, but rather than spreading the cloths of heaven under their feet, I would wrap them round my children to protect and warm them.

Yet the poem speaks also of the vulnerability of love – in giving yourself, you are also giving away the power to hurt you, as anyone who has ever suffered a broken relationship knows. The poem ends with a plea to the loved on not to trample on the dreams we have built around them.

The last three lines, reflecting this vulnerability, recur in ‘The Loves of Cass McGuire’, spoken by characters who have suffered rejection and despair, and are a plea not to destroy their fantasies, which are all they have left to sustain them.

It leaves me reflecting that maybe we all, as humans, sometimes deal with unpleasant truths in our lives by deciding to see things in a different way – a way that supports us, whether or not it accurately reflects the objective truth. And what is truth anyway?


Sunday 5 March 2017

Introducing ‘The Loves of Cass McGuire’

The next play to be staged at The Apollo will be ‘The Loves of Cass McGuire’ by the renowned Irish playwright Brian Friel.

Set in 1960’s Ireland, the play follows the fortunes of Cass as she returns to her homeland after half a century in New York on Skid Row, shacked up with the owner of the greasy spoon she worked in. Her younger brother Harry has made a life for himself and his wife Alice and has a prosperous business and four children, only one of whom, Dom, still lives at home, as does Cass and Harry’s elderly – and very deaf – mother.

Alice and Harry prepare to welcome Cass home but, expecting a staid, respectable American spinster aunt, they are horrified to witness the whisky-drinking, smoking, swearing, garrulous Cass going on the rampage through their home town. Embarrassed by her, they shelve plans for a welcome home party for all the neighbours and instead dump her in Eden House, a retirement home.

There, Cass encounters Trilbe Costello, Mr Ingram and Pat Quinn, all of whom have also experienced disappointment and rejection in their lives, and have found ways of dealing with their hurt. Initially scornful of the ‘gooks’ in ‘the workhouse’, Cass find her own determination gradually eroding until, beaten into submission, she is driven to find her own way out of her despair.

As with many of Friel’s plays, ‘Cass McGuire’ is a true tragicomedy – there are moments of great humour underpinned by thought-provoking and emotional  truths.


‘The Loves of Cass McGuire’ is at The Apollo from 24 March to 1 April (not Sunday or Monday). Tickets are available now via our website.