In Windborne, we don’t sing a lot of Irish music, but we wanted to wish you a happy (belated) St. Patrick’s Day with this gem from our first year performing with Christmas Celtic Sojourn in 2017. Brian O’Donovan, the show’s host, is a big fan of vaudeville and often includes a humorous number like this in the show, and you know we never pass up an opportunity to do something theatrical and fun! My Irish Molly also features the masterful dancing of Kevin Doyle.
Staging this piece was truly delightful because it was so different from the other pieces in the show and really let us indulge our silly side. For one, we all got to wear bowler hats! We were really excited about our “choreography,” which included hat tips at the end of every chorus and some excellent hand motions on the line “Springtime, you know is ring time / Come dear, now don’t be slow.” Our stage direction for when we weren’t singing was to stand very still in our tight formation with gigantic smiles to the audience–you can catch a glimpse of this borderline-creepy expression a few times throughout the video. 🙂
Perhaps our biggest contribution to the silliness of this piece, however, comes in at 3:50. (SPOILER ALERT–watch the video first before reading on if you want to experience the surprise!)
When we were working on our harmonies for this piece, we were especially tickled by the dramatic “ohhhhhh-ohhhhhhh” that goes into the chorus, because to us those chords sounded exactly like the lead-in to the chorus of We Three Kings of Orient Are. At first, it was the kind of thing we just giggled about amongst ourselves, since we were first-year cast members and didn’t want to seem unprofessional. But after realizing how much Brian and the director were willing to lean into the over-the-topness of the style, we floated our idea to insert the Christmas carol and got enthusiastic approval.
The only potential downside to this piece is that it is an instant earworm! When I (Lauren) texted the rest of Windborne about posting it this week, Lynn texted back almost immediately saying, “Well, now I have Irish Molly stuck in my head…” So we hope you like it, because you might have it on unintentional repeat for quite a while! 🙂
