Druids on the eve of a Famine and a feast

GALWAY’S Druid Theatre is about to launch the largest touring event in Irish theatre this year and the most ambitious project in its distinguished history with DruidMurphy, celebrating the work of playwright Tom Murphy, in a production that includes an ensemble cast of 17 actors and will tour in Ireland, the UK and the US until October.

 

Featuring three plays by one of Ireland’s foremost dramatists, DruidMurphy examines the theme of home for those who leave and those left behind. Famine charts the legacy of history and the price of survival as a West of Ireland village faces starvation in 1846.

A Whistle in the Dark portrays the violence wrought by Mayo’s Carney family when uprooted to 1960s Coventry. Conversations on a Homecoming simmers with the bitter disillusion confronting an Irish emigrant on his return to a small town in Galway in the 1970s.

“It’s a big statement of Murphy’s writing and what he’s saying in all his plays,” explains John Olohan, who appears in Famine, of the retrospective.

“Famine is the epic, mainly because of the size of the subject matter but also the size of the cast, which has all the people in the other two plays, plus another four or five extra actors. It’s a massive thing and it’s the last of the three that’s going on. It’s as if, ‘This is why everything else has happened’.

“The play mainly focuses on one village and the beginning of the Famine as seen through the eyes of a very small community. It tries to explore different attitudes of mind of the people and their lack of mobility when they suddenly realise they don’t have the potato anymore. They became static. During that period only one landlord was ever killed. They just froze and let it happen to them. There was no great uprising or national movement. The State came up with the plan of clearing the land and getting the people out of the country.”

At the heart of Famine, and drawing all three plays together, is emigration and its effects. “That’s the main parallel with today,” says Mr Olohan of DruidMurphy’s contemporary resonance. “It’s part and parcel of our culture to emigrate every so often. Certain generations go and certain generations stay. All down through history there’s been periods when people had to get out of Ireland.”

It’s something Tom Murphy knew only too well. Born in Tuam in 1935 and the youngest of 10 children, the playwright’s family was decimated by emigration. Murphy’s father and nine siblings sought work in Birmingham so only he and his mother remained in Ireland. After A Whistle in the Dark – rejected by the Abbey Theatre due to its savage depiction of Irishness – became a success in London in 1961, Murphy moved to England, where he lived for almost a decade.

As part of this extensive tour, Druid will perform the three plays in London to coincide with the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, the biggest ever festival in the UK, the Lincoln Centre Festival in New York and in the 1,200 seat Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC.

“It’ll be interesting to see what the effect of all three plays together will be,” says Mr Olohan. “I don’t think anybody knows. What an English or an American audience will get from it, I have no idea but it’ll be something big.”

Mr Olohan most recently appeared in Clare in the roles of Sylvester in The Silver Tassie and as Byrne in Big Maggie. For the latter, he won the Best Supporting Actor category at the 2011 Irish Times Theatre Awards. Both plays were Druid productions and both were directed by Garry Hynes.

“Usually rehearsals are great fun,” he says of working with the Tony Award-winning director. “Even with the enormity of this project – three plays going together at the same time is a crazy thing to think about, never mind do – she remains as cool as a breeze. She’s very detailed in her work. If there’s a false note at all, she’ll pull you up on it. I love that. I hate the ‘It’ll do’ attitude. She has to have it right, so you know you’re in good hands and you can trust her 100%.”

In Famine, he plays the part of Dan O’Dea. The character’s attempt to survive derives from his need to keep talking and he provides some light relief during the unfolding tragedy.

“Dan represents the elder statesman,” explains Mr Olohan. “He’s like the senior adviser to John Connor, who’s the clan leader. Dan’s a bit of a joker as well. He’s good humoured, even knowing what’s ahead of them.”

Familiar to audiences from TV roles in Glenroe, Father Ted, Ballykissangel and The Tudors, Mr Olohan’s career on stage didn’t start as an actor but as a musician. During a break from playing with a band in his native Kells, County Meath, he “fell into” acting.

“I decided to go into the Abbey School of Acting [in 1970] to learn some production techniques,” Mr Olohan says. “From that, I got extras’ work in Abbey plays. Then I did scene painting and stage management and, eventually, I found myself working in the Abbey and I went into the Young Abbey, where we’d put on plays in the classroom. I went freelance and then I ended up in the Abbey for 10 years.”

During his career, Mr Olohan has performed in plays by dramatists as diverse as Shakespeare, Beckett, Hugh Leonard and Martin McDonagh. However, he insists Tom Murphy’s work has a quality all of its own.

“The language is the thing that differentiates them all. Brian Friel is more lyrical, more poetic and rich. Murphy is staccato. There are passages in Famine that are the most articulate I’ve ever read in a play. But he’s dealing with peasant people, so he writes in the vernacular. The writing tries to show that these people are not in control of the language, that they are recently speaking English. But it’s beautiful. The big thing about Tom’s language is its musicality.”

DruidMurphy runs at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway from this Friday until June 9. Famine opens next Wednesday. For details, see www.druid.ie.