A nicer kind of riot – Frank McNally on the Irish cultural storming of Paris

Reports of the demise of Paris appear to have been somewhat exaggerated, based on my own visit there last weekend.

I was staying near the Place de la République, which has been a regular focus of mass protests. But in three days and nights of strolling the streets and boulevards, I didn’t see a single burnt-out car, or smell tear gas, or hear a window smashed.

True, the police had closed a lot of strategically located Metro stations, République included. Many shop owners in the area had also taken the precaution of boarding up their windows – but stylishly, in the French manner, combining function with visual aesthetic – ahead of the latest demonstrations.

Based on plywood coverage, shops selling footwear and jewellery seemed to be most at risk of having their contents liberated by opportunist looters. Even in Paris, the bookstores were considered safe enough.

Down around the banks of the Seine, meanwhile, the city was as lovely as ever. In the benign late autumn weather, trees still had enough foliage to dapple the sunlight pouring through them onto the footpaths. Even on November 1st, you could sit on cafe terraces without an overcoat and watch the world pass.

I was in Paris mainly for the unveiling of a plaque to Eileen Gray on Saturday. But on Sunday, with little or no warning, I found myself caught up in a day-long riot of Irish culture that seemed to break out spontaneously down near Place du Châtelet.

In fact, as is often the case with riots, this one was carefully planned too. To mark Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the EU, various of our cultural bodies had taken over the Théâtre de la Ville for the day and were staging a national show of force.

Performers included Jean Butler, giving 70 Parisians a crash course in Irish dancing in the foyer, although not before loosening their limbs with freestyle self-expression to a blast of Sinéad O’Connor’s Mandinka.

Elsewhere in the building, there was an extraordinary thing called Samhain by Michael Keegan-Dolan, in which a cast of skeletons performed a Hibernian version of danse macabre.

Then there was the description-defying “Leather Jacket Solo” by Oona Doherty, part of a large dance-and-vocal composition. It was inspired, apparently, by observations of fragile masculinity among young men on the streets of Belfast.

I don’t know if the French people present knew what they were watching – I was unsure myself – but such was the manic energy Doherty invested in the work, she won several deserved curtain calls from a packed and rapt theatre.

On a more serene note, there were poetry readings too, including one in the first national language by a young Corkman named Darragh Ó Caoimh, whose mellifluous Kanturk accent made Irish sound almost as sexy as French.

There was also poetry in English and French, read respectively by Stephen Rea and the apparently ageless Isabelle Huppert, an illustrious Parisian contributor to the Irish culture fest.

Elsewhere in Paris this week, Rea has been performing Krapp’s Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett. Which helps explain the rude-sounding title of one of the background exhibits at the Théâtre de la Ville: All That Krapp. The exhibit is a retrospective of John Minihan’s classic black-and-white photography, featuring Beckett and others.

In the world capital of perfumery, not even that was left untouched in the day’s programme, thanks to a remarkable Ennis woman, Meabh McCurtin. It’s a long, long way from Clare to the Paris perfume industry (with a route that, in her case, included the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, where she did a master’s in molecular biology).

But as a star in perfume’s French firmament, she recently descended to Irish earth again. McCurtin did so for long enough to recreate the smells of Joyce’s Ulysses, as identified for her by Joycean scholar Christine O’Neill.

The 14 perfumes that resulted include Mild Morning Air (inspired by the book’s opening scene, at the Martello Tower); Melonsmellonous (from the penultimate chapter, in which Leopold Bloom kisses his wife’s bottom goodnight), and the classic Beery Men, (inspired by the earthy odours from Burton’s restaurant, circa 1904, that persuaded Bloom to have lunch next door instead).

If you’ve ever wondered how the smell of “Beery Men” can be reproduced scientifically, without either men or beer, wonder no more. McCurtin’s formula identifies its top notes as “hop ultimate” and “rum absolute”. Tobacco and gentian absolutes form the fragrance’s “heart notes”. As for the “base notes”, those are “Oakwood Carbon Dioxide”, “Cypriol” and “Hay absolute”.

Which makes being a beery man sound like more serious work than hitherto suspected. Anyway, the Joycean scents were also included in the Paris Irish jamboree, available for smelling all day.

These and the many other shows presented an uncompromisingly modern view of Ireland to Paris, with enough avant garde to storm the left bank, just across the river.

But the swaggering display of Irish talent ended in traditional style via a session by a Théâtre de la Ville ceilí band, comprising musicians from the Association Irlandaise de Paris. A cocktail reception accompanied that riotous assembly, although with none of the cocktails being of the Molotov kind, it too passed off peacefully.