Forgotten Irish clown gets new life in Barabbas show

Date Published: {J}

A real-life 19th century clown, who was born just before the Great Famine and who was murdered on stage in Tralee in 1889 is the inspiration for the latest show from Tuam based writer, actor and musician, Little John Nee.

Johnny Patterson, The Singing Irish Clown will be on the stage of the Town Hall Theatre on May 11 and 12 in a production from Barabbas Theatre.

The show, which was critically acclaimed on its first outing, at last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival, is directed by Raymond Keane of Barabbas and the cast features Little John, along with Roger Gregg and Bryan Burroughs whose performance won him the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor

Little John, Barabbas and Johnny Patterson is a relationship made in heaven. Since it was set up in 1993, Barabbas has specialised in theatre of the clown, putting mime and physical theatre at the centre of its shows. Little John’s own shows mix physical comedy, stories and music to great effect and before he took to the stage, he was renowned for his clown-style street performances.

And while you might not have ever heard of Johnny Patterson, chances are that most Irish people over a certain age will know some of his songs. The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door, Goodbye Johnny and The Garden Where the Praties Grow were among the compositions from this man who went from humble beginnings in Clare to become one of the most acclaimed clowns in America.

Barabbas began their national tour of this play in Tralee, the town where Johnny Patterson was murdered in the circus ring and, says Little John, the warm response there “was exactly what we wanted”.

Patterson’s own visit to Tralee in 1889 took place at the height of the tension in Ireland between Nationalists and Unionists over Home Rule. There, he sang a song that he had written urging the two sides to work together for the betterment of all. A row broke out after Do Your Best for One Another and he was hit by an iron bar, dying two days later in the local fever hospital.

It was a tragic end for the 49-year-old who had held audiences in the palm of his hand from his teen years, when he first joined the circus.

Barabbas will finish their tour in Ennis, where Johnny Patterson spent his boyhood, having moved there from nearby Feakle following the death of his parents, explains Little John.

Patterson worked for his uncle, a nailer, and demonstrated a passion for music that led his uncle to enlist 14-year-old Johnny as a drummer boy in a British army regiment based in Limerick. There he learned how to play drums and piccolo as well as other instruments and got a part-time job with a circus. He later bought himself out of the army and joined Swallows Circus on a fulltime basis.

He played music but also had an ability to sing and tell jokes and it was these skills that led him to being so highly regarded. He worked with several other circuses before moving to Liverpool with the Pablo Franque Circus in 1869, where he met Selena Hickey, the woman he would marry and with whom he would have three children. Later he left his family, seeking fame in America with major circus Cooper’s and Bailey which had headhunted him. Years later his wife died in a poorhouse.

In the United States Johnny became one of the best known and highest paid entertainers of his day, although he suffered personal misfortune when one of his daughters was killed back home in Ireland by an elephant.

He eventually returned home, a wealthy man, joining forces with an Australian Joe Keely to set up Keely and Patterson’s circus. And it was while touring with this company that he met his tragic end.

Little John had first heard of Johnny Patterson in 1993 through musicians Mícheál Ó Suilleabhain and Mel Mercier who gave him some of the clown’s songs for a one-off show about Johnny Patterson in Cork’s Everyman Palace in which Little John played the clown.

Years later Barabbas’s Raymond Keane – a friend and fellow performer – told John about a Jack B Yeats painting he had seen called The Singing Clown. That had been inspired by Patterson. Raymond had never heard of him until then, but thought that Little John – given his style of writing and performance in previous shows such as The Derry Boat – would be a perfect singing clown.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.