Little shop of horrors

Jon Kenny is about to play one of the lead roles in Jim Nolan’s The Salvage Shop but by the time we finish talking about the play’s various themes he agrees that maybe it should be re-titled Fuck Me, I Ain’t Gonna End Up Like This!

Admittedly the title is quite unwieldy and might offend the sensitive souls in Waterford who are going to see a production which has been chosen to reopen the Garter Lane Theatre after a major revamping.
Either way, the play itself is set in the early ‘90s and tells the tale of Sylvester Tansey (played by Frank Grimes), an ageing bandmaster and opera buff who is haunted by personal betrayal and the memory of a glorious past. He’s also in conflict with his son, Eddie (played by Kenny), who struggles to forge a reconciliation with his father.
Jon claims that the ‘Fuck me…’ line came to him when he went home at weekend during rehearsals and related the theme of the play to his relationship with his own 13-year-old son. He also thinks the ‘I ain’t gonna end up like this’ notion is one that could strike anyone watching the play, father, son, mother or daughter. The theme of the play is, he says, very universal.
“There are a few reasons I was attracted to this play. Partly because, after doing Dylan’s Thomas’s Under Milk Wood I wanted to do more ‘straight’ theatre this year and this fits into my schedule. Though, of course, even in my comedy act I always also played ‘straight’ characters that, at times were very serious, even dark. But I did see The Salvage Shop and thought ‘this really is a good piece of theatre.’"
Although set in the early ‘90s, the story, says Kenny is timeless. “This shit is still happening between parents and their children. Some people do still find it hard to relate or to communicate their feelings and they let situations drift out of control, which is what happens in the The Salvage Shop.”
Given that he himself now is a father, can Kenny relate to both of the lead roles rather than simply the son he plays in The Salvage Shop?
“Well, my son is only 13 so he’s quite young yet for what goes on in this play to apply to us,” he says. “But I am aware of people who have very, very bad relations with even their own families. But too often in those situations one person thinks, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong’ whereas this play is more about two wrongs don’t make a right. And even if my own son is too young for me to relate this play to, it is true that when I get home for the weekend after rehearsing all week long I do become incredibly conscious of the fact that I hope our relationship will never get to the feckin’ stage of the father and son in The Salvage Shop!”
This, he says, is one of the benefits of acting in such a play.
“You learn the script, you absorb it, you perform it and you feel all the things the character feels.”