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Druid conjures emigrant stories in Ennis


CLARE’S drama fans have a chance to enjoy two of Tom Murphy’s plays later this month.

Druid will be in Ennis performing Conversations on a Homecoming and A Whistle in the Dark, from May 21-25. There will be performances of both plays on the 25, and both are directed by Garry Hynes.

Belfast actor Marty Rea is in both plays. He says Druid have been working on the plays for a long time.

“We started rehearsing them last year, Garry Hynes and co were working on them for years even before that. There were three big Tom Murphy plays last year and we’re taking two of them out again this year, so it’s been a long time in the making.”

In Conversations on a Homecoming he plays Michael, who is coming back to rural Galway after a decade in the Big Apple. He sees changes in the friends he left behind.

“He comes back to the small town in Galway where he grew up to meet with his mates. Him and his best mate Tom had helped this guy JJ to get this pub together. JJ was a real inspiration to them, he looked like Kennedy, he encouraged them to get into the arts and to leave and travel the world and do great things.

“They had this pub called the White House and they spent time in there talking about their futures and great ideals. Michael comes home after 10 years away and finds them all still there. They’ve become stuck and embittered and affected by small town politics, but also Michael’s life in New York hasn’t been great either.

“It’s just a wonderful study that’s all set in the pub, kind of in real time. There’s no interval, you’re with them all this time in the pub,” says Marty of the play.

While rural discontent might be an issue, he says it’s not too downbeat.

“It’s not dark, there are huge laughs in it. There are great characters in it and any Irish person will recognise them, they’re brilliantly drawn, brilliantly observed.”

For some the play evokes a time that has gone past.

“It’s set in the 70s and some people love looking at it, there’s a reminiscence thing going on, people who remember being in their early thirties in the early ’70s, they know what he’s talking about. The ’60s had been a breath of fresh air in Ireland, Kennedy had just been and they felt that things were going to change. Then it kind of went backwards, that’s kind of what it’s about.”

A Whistle in the Dark is another emigrant story, about the Carney family, originally from Mayo.

Marty’s character is again named Michael, who is trying to keep his brothers on the rails.

“Michael, who I play, is the eldest brother and he lives in Coventry with an English wife. He has a house and a job and he’s trying to get on and do well for himself, but he has brothers over there who are kind of doing the opposite and he wants to kind of save them all.

“The father is coming over with the youngest brother to visit and it’s all about Michael trying to get the youngest brother to go home so he doesn’t get embroiled in all the stuff the brothers are doing. But of course Michael and the father don’t get on great.”

He says the play is very angry and quite dark, although there is some humour around the family’s patriarch Dada.

“He’s a pure bull****ter, just a blaggard, and there’s great craic to be knocked out of that.”

While Michael locks horns with his father, there’s also a strained relationship with his brother Harry.

“Harry is of the view that ‘we’re scum over here, why shouldn’t I show them I am scum so?’ Michael is saying you can’t fit in that way, you have to show them that you’re better than that. It’s a huge debate going on, and when you see the play you’ll understand there’s another thing between Michael and Harry that lifts it above debate, there’s actual hatred going on, I think.”

Marty trained as an actor in London and spent a few years working there afterwards, but he says his agent wasn’t particularly imaginative and he was only put forward for parts that were linked to an Irish stereotype.

“It was hard, I didn’t find it easy in London. I had good friends and had a good time and everything but I wasn’t getting to do the parts that I had trained to do. I was being put up for silly parts in TV to play IRA men, priests or snooker players!”

He got an offer to take a more substantial role in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Abbey, and has been back in Ireland for about seven years now.

Of performing more than one play, he says things are a little easier than when they first went on the road.

“Last year we had three of them (Tom Murphy plays), there was another play called Famine, as well. This year it’s actually easier, there’s more head space. Coming back to them we’re more confident, more aware and familiar with them. The shape of them is more definite in my head, it’s not so panicky all the time.”

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