In Search of Fanny the Barmaid
From Planet 225
Peter Stevenson recounts the experience of performing Welsh folk tales around Wales and the US during 2016, and what these stories of walls, boundaries and otherworlds tell us following the EU referendum and the US election.
The Provincetown Playhouse opened in bohemian Greenwich Village in November 1916, with two plays, King Arthur's Socks by Floyd Dell, and Eugene O'Neill's Bound East for Cardiff, which told of a British Tramp Steamer, the Glencairn, sailing through the fog from New York to Wales. One of the crew, 'Yank', lay in his bunk, his body broken following a fall, desperate to reach Cardiff before passing over to the other side.
YANK: ‘You know Fanny the barmaid at the Red Stork in Cardiff?’
DRISCOLL: ‘Sure, and who doesn’t?’
YANK: ‘She’s been good to me. She tried to lend me half a crown when I was broke there last trip. Buy her the biggest box of candy yuh c’n find in Cardiff.’ (Breaking down ̶ in a choking voice.)
