Brownbread & War

by Roddy Doyle

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha , two plays set in the north Dublin suburb of Barrytown

Watch for Roddy Doyle’s new novel, Smile , coming in October of 2017

From novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle come these two colorful plays. both set in the North Dublin suburb of Barrytown. In Brownbread , three young men kidnap a bishop but soon come to realize--when the U.S. Marines invade--that their brilliant adventure is nothing more than a colossal mistake. War is set at the Hiker's Rest, a pub where two trivia addicts meet every month to answer questions posed by Denis trhe quizmaster who hates wrong answers and shoots to kill. These earthy, exuberant works show why The New York Times Book Review says Doyle's "versatility and brio...may shock the neighbors, but...you can't take your eyes off him."

Genres: Plays, Drama, Ireland, Irish Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993.

Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from University College, Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.

Reviews

[Amelie Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plays are not usually my thing but I did enjoy this. Brownbread was decent but War was good fun.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roddy Doyle knows these plays aren't very good; he says so in the introduction. While writing The Commitments, he saw two plays written by a friend of his about actual, relatable Irish people doing things that people he knew might do in their lives, which he'd never seen in a play before. With that, and because the theatre was looking for new Irish plays, he wrote two, that are here, in a book.

Brown Bread is bad. It might be good as a one act, but the need to keep butts in seats for long enough to justify the money they paid to be there in the first place means that the play goes on four times as long as it needs to. Three youfs kidnap a bishop. There's the dumb but earnest kid, the kid who's more middle class and pretending not to be, and the kid who's a violent kind of blah. The lads and the bishop are in an upstairs room with a window stage set, and the police, parents, military, etc. are down below in the street. There are some moments, like when the police ask why they kidnapped the bishop and one of the kids says, "Jobs!" and then they discuss amongst themselves why the one said jobs and whether they would want jobs if there were jobs to be had. The bishop is a Yank so the US army turns up and occupies an island and there's a comic duo: a corporal who is polished but not very good at things and a hick private from Mississippi who feeds the corporal lines while the corporal is talking into his walkie-talkie. It unfurls that the lads found a gun and didn't have anything else to do, so they kidnapped the bishop. Do the Irish absolutely love US presidents? Ronald Reagan makes a telephone call. It's like the Derry Girls and Clinton. This might have been better if I was Irish in the '80s and understood the zeitgeist.

War is better and might actually be a halfway decent stage play but it's not too good for reading. There's a pub quiz, and we have three teams on stage, and that's already so many people, but the other half of the stage is George's kitchen where his wife Briget does domestic tasks while he attends the pub quiz, and there are flashbacks where we see their troubled marriage and he almost hits her. George's daughter Yvonne is doing the pub quiz with Lorraine, Naimh, and Naimh's boyfriend Dermot, but Yvonne and Dermot made out at a party and Naimh finds out over the course of Yvonne hinting at it all night. Gary is drunk. George is way too into the pub quiz. Bertie speaks pretend Spanish. Doyle is definitely playing with a lot of ideas that will come up, fully fleshed out and better, in The Snapper. Tommy is boring. Noel is somebody. Angela is divorced. There's tension. Sandra is a sixteen-year-old barmaid who's endlessly being leered at. This might be a good stage play but reading it is not a great experience.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plays are meant to be seen performed on stage, not read like novels, so there's my caveat. That said, these two plays are pretty consistent with other stage-adapted Doyle works like The Snapper, which I was privileged to see at the Gate Theatre in Dublin a couple of years ago, and like that work are set in Barrytown. Brownbread is the more outrageous and uproarious of the two, and I wouldn't mind seeing it performed. War has much more involved ensemble instructions and appears to be considerably longer; it read a bit too much like an R-rated episode of an Irish Cheers. With the right direction, I'm sure it too would garner its share of laughs, though it has a more realistic undertone (i.e., is less farcical ) than Brownbread. Fans of Doyle will not be disappointed.

[A. Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of these two plays, written in the late 1980s, *Brownbread* is the stronger and more entertaining for me. It's the story of three teenagers who abduct a bishop on first communion Sunday. Sadly, they had no plan. They take him home to the row housing, and the play includes amusing scenes of parents coming to shout at their lads and issue threats, of police trying to control the situation, and of orders for takeaway delivery. But, there is in contemporary Irish writing an undercurrent of clerical scandal, something that's there every time a priest is on the page. So, the bishop is mostly silent, he's cowardly, and he gets to walk away. Everything goes back to normal. Funny, with a whiff of disturbing. The second play, *War* is less successful. It's set in an ordinary neighbourhood, with trivia night at the pub as the central action. The private lives of the players are the sidebars, and at times, there are too many characters coming and going and speaking. The pub is too crowded. Still, it has its moments.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fun picturing Brendan Gleeson in both plays. Brownbread would be exhausting to see because nearly every line of dialogue seems to be yelled, but I still enjoyed the satire. War has a lot of the (slightly) more understated Roddy Doyle charm; the most low-stakes competition of all time (bar trivia) becomes an all out war as we get flashbacks of two contestants’ family strife.

[Dave Donahoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brownbread 2.5
War 3

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roddy Doyle seems to work a lot better as a short story writer. These plays both felt a bit like unfocused exercises. War was the stronger of the two and if you've ever been to a pub quiz, well, it's pretty spot on.

[Dave-o · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brownbread, the tale of three Dublin lads who kidnap a bishop (mid-confirmation no less) is fantastic.

War, based around a table quiz is pretty good but not as good as it's counterpart.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious