THE CURTAIN had just come down on Mrs Brown’s Last Wedding at Hull’s New Theatre that wet and windy Saturday night on 25 November 2009, when Brendan called together the cast for a meeting.
Those who’d watched the show, a reprise of the very first Mrs Brown stage adventure featuring Agnes and her dysfunctional family, had laughed till they cried and applauded till their hands ached.
But only 150 people had turned out that night, in a theatre that held 1,159. And this wasn’t the first box-office disaster of the tour. Every theatre reported a major drop in ticket sales.
Brendan O’Carroll, aka Agnes Brown, knew the writing wasn’t only on the wall; it was on the invoices and final demands from sound crews, advertising agencies, car companies, and hotels – and all in red ink.
So he’d come to a decision. As the doors of the theatre were clattering shut and the slowest members of the audience shuffling home, Brendan asked the whole troupe to sit down on the stage. Tearfully he told them that it was all over, the end of Mrs Brown on tour – he simply couldn’t afford to keep the show on the road.
Struggling to hold his voice steady, he informed the cast, including his wife, his son, his daughter, his sister, his son-in-law, his daughter-in-law and friends he’d known for 20 years, that tonight was the last hurrah. The cast were stunned, if not entirely surprised. They offered each other consolatory hugs and sniffled against Mrs Brown’s beige cardie.
And at the end of the night, each shuffled off into the darkness, facing a future with little hope. The Mrs Brown dream, their lives together, the fun of touring, the very comfortable living they’d made, was over. How would bills be paid? These weren’t career actors; most had only ever worked on stage alongside Agnes Brown. The air hung heavy with the dark, unspoken reality. The fat lady was finally singing.
Or was she?
Brendan’s lucky leprechaun was waiting in the wings. Ready to find a way to silence her.