Greta Garbo Came to Donegal
Tricycle
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Olivier
Frank McGuinness, the world’s leading supplier of Celtic Kleenex drama, is back with a variation on his favourite theme. Misery upon misery bravely borne in a green, green island long, long ago. The twist is the addition of Greta Garbo. In 1967, the wandering superstar visited McGuinness’s home town of Buncrana in Donegal. This nugget of truth is decorated with fictional frills. McGuinness billets the melancholy hermit on an invented Irish family, the Hennessys, whose house has been bought by a society painter from England. The toiling Irish underlings are thus condemned to scrub and skivvy in a mansion their ancestors once owned. Family tensions are accentuated by this daily humiliation. Money is tight, drink is plentiful, hope is fragile and short-lived. The senior family members have fallen into unbreakable patterns of behaviour. Everyone makes jokes about Sylvia, whose looks are supposed to be fading.
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