A Whale Of A Time

Ever go out to the pub for a few jars with your mates hoping for a damn good fight at the end of the night?

I don’t mean flailing, errant handbags at dawn on Patrick Street. I mean a good old-fashioned argument on the burning issues of the day. If you do like an argument then you may, like Naoise Nunn, have begun to despair when you simply couldn’t whip up enough disparity of viewpoints among your acquaintances to get a decent row going.
But the long-time manager of Après Match didn’t just let it lie. Still spoiling for a fight, he plotted and schemed how he could break the muffle-hold of middle-class consensus, not just for his own mates around the table in the bar, but also for the public at large.
So Leviathan was born in December 2003. The first shows were a joint production by Nunn and The City Arts Centre’s Civil Arts Inquiry.
The idea was to replicate what Nunn sees as pretty much the ideal night out; “You have a conversation, an argument, a few scoops, a bit of a laugh and round it all off with a couple of songs at the end.”
This deceptively jolly and straightforward pitch however is just the wrapper for a trickier manifesto with loftier aims.
Straighten up in your chair and prepare to be improved by this from the publicity material for the first Leviathan: “Life may be solitary, nasty, brutish and short. But, if we refuse to participate in politics, we end up being governed by inferiors. There is little point complaining about the status quo if we are not prepared to engage in discussion and debate about how we organise our society and deal with one another. Leviathan aims to provide an informal and entertaining forum for just such participation and engagement.”
That first show in The Hub in Temple Bar was an eclectic and fascinating, if bizarre, mixture of representatives of all these promised elements.
Hosted by Des Bishop, gamely ploughing through uncertain depths and reaches of a strange river, it saw John Waters and Eoghan Harris engage in a staged debate/conversation, Pat Rabbitte standing up and giving forth on the soap box, comedy from Sue Collins and, to round it off, as promised, a couple of songs from Ronnie Drew.
The evening was certainly entertaining (if you round off most evenings with a couple of numbers from Ronnie you’ll hardly go far wrong). But it was evident that, whilst there was an interesting notion at the heart of it all, much evolution was needed if it were ever going to escape the oddity column.
Fast Forward to 2004 and the Leviathan shows in the Spiegeltent as part of the Dublin Fringe that year, These were the first shows hosted by David McWilliams. “It occurred to me,” says Nunn, “that David was good at current affairs and a good entertainer He clearly enjoyed the latter and I wanted to give him a run at it.”
McWilliams turned up for the first show in a bow tie and got stuck in straight away working the room with aplomb. A number of other hosts had been tried, but it was obvious from the get-go that McWilliams was the host for Leviathan. With this missing piece of the jigsaw slotted in, the whole concept seemed to make sense and to work far more coherently. Naoise has McWilliams’ efforts in large part to thank for that: “He enjoys doing it, he’s very good and I’m very grateful to him.”
The show now runs monthly in Crawdaddy and there have been some very interesting moments, none more so than during the “What have the Brits ever done for Ireland?” debate. With typical style/chutzpah, Naoise, by now the show’s sole producer, had persuaded the British Council to sponsor this particular show. This gave him the wherewithal to commission a special animation from Langerland.com, the Irish satirical website, entitled “Top 10 Things Britain Has Done for Ireland”. Check it out for yourselves at the Langerland website. It’s a cheerily prurient and uncomplimentary return for the British Council’s investment.
In fact, it’s an award-winning cartoon, having picked up a gong at the Galway Film Fleadh (Langerland.com itself is a finalist in the Digital Media Wards 2006). To add to the potential discomfort of the accused, the evening’s comic turn was one Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly. The magnificent Paul Woodful’s balladeering, xenophobic alter-ego at one point reportedly had the whole audience, including the chair of the British Council on their feet shouting “UP THE RA!” Now that’s a peace process.
Isn’t it all a bit like preaching to the converted though? Wouldn’t you expect the audience at such an event to be turning up to congratulate itself on its Guardianesque right-on-ness. Naoise has two points to make in reply to this allegation.
Firstly, he says the whole idea of wrapping political debate in a shiny entertainment and comedy foil is to basically trick a wider public into coming along by dangling their favourite gagster or chanteuse before them, and then, once they are in the trap, to ensnare them with thought provoking point and counterpoint from the debating platform.
This is fair enough in theory, but isn’t the audience still dominated by middle class liberals? That’s where Nunn’s second and more interesting point comes in. “You’re suggesting we’re preaching to the converted, but actually we’re converting the converted. There’s substance to what’s going on. People may, as you suggest, be coming along in the expectation of a slap on the back. Often there’s a middle class liberal consensus in the room when the event starts, but then it breaks up as the debate goes on.”
One example of this phenomenon was a recent Leviathan debate on the subject “Is Nuclear Power the Solution to Global Warming?” There was an almost unanimous “No” in the room at the start of this debate, but some informed scientific input had an effect and the room was far more divided and open to the notion by the end of the proceedings.
Few have the breadth of informed openness to political thought gifted to Naoise Nunn by inclination and by dint of experience (Queens Politics graduate, three and a half years working in the Oireachtas). And few do visionary zeal so well. “Leviathan is more part of a movement than a show,” he says casually. There is a proposal for a TV version resting with RTE at the moment and future Leviathan outings may be larger “events” rather than cabaret shows.
It remains to be seen if Leviathan and its fellow travellers can widely re-politicise the nation through the medium of mirth. But with the infectious enthusiasm of Naoise Nunn and the charm and boyish good looks of the show’s host, it just might have a chance.
David McWilliams pic: Liam Sweeney