A Celtic Christmas at the Granada

A good storyteller can spin a captivating yarn from the most mundane topics. They can carry their audience to another time and place. It’s an art-and a gift-and Tom¡seen Foley has it in spades. Last Wednesday, the Irishman and his troupe of four transformed the Granada into an Irish “rambling house,” sharing stories, traditional music, and dance.

The sparse set consisted only of a few chairs, a black backdrop, and a hanging four-paned window with a candle in it, yet the space came alive as Foley described the rambling house, the term used for cottages in which neighbors gathered on wintry nights to share music and stories. “In the west of Ireland, where I was born and reared, all the old traditions of song and dance and music and storytelling were all once very strong,” Foley said. “‘Twas a remote and rural place in the west of Ireland called Teampall an Gleantain. And I grew up in a house that was typical of that place and that time, with the whitewashed stonewalls, the thatched roof, the half-door and the small windows.”

Throughout the show, Foley shared traditions that went back before “the quills inked history,” as his grandmother put it, creating an intimate ambiance. In his mellifluous voice, he spoke of the excitement of getting Christmas parcels from family members who had emigrated to America; of putting a candle in the window and a bucket of water outside the door for lost loved ones who come calling at Christmas; of what a great country Ireland would make if only they could put a roof over it.