VOTED ONE of the top 10 plays of the last decade in the Sunday Times Critics Choice, Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer is a blackly funny, moving and spooky drama. Nomad Theatre Network and Decadent Theatre Company have now mounted a new production of this award-winning play which is coming soon to the Town Hall Theatre as part of a national tour.
It is Christmas Eve and Sharky has returned to Dublin to look after his irascible, ageing brother Richard who has recently gone blind. Old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky are holed up at the house too, hoping to play some cards.
With the arrival of a sinister stranger from the distant past, Mr Lockhart, the stakes are raised ever higher. In fact, Sharky may be playing for his very soul...
In the midst of this eerie, darkly humorous tale, playwright Conor McPherson tells the tender story of a family and examines how we face the demons of our past as we struggle to find redemption. It is a haunting tale of local lads in boozily festive spirits on one unforgettable evening, where everyone lays their cards and their souls on the table.
Directed by Andrew Flynn, the production features a stellar cast which includes Garrett Keogh, Joe Savino, Robert O’Mahoney, and Paul Roe.
The role of Ivan is taken by Frankie McCafferty, one of our most versatile actors, equally at home on stage or screen and equally adept in comic or serious roles. TV viewers will recall him as one of the stalwarts of Ballykissangel where he formed a memorable double act with fellow Seafarer cast-member Joe Savino as the lads Donal and Liam.
Playgoers will long remember vivid turns such as his Tom Fool in At The Black Pig’s Dyke, the villainous Dinzie in Sharon’s Grave (both with Druid ) or Moore in the Lyric’s 2003 staging of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme, for which he received an ESB/Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor.
From Druid to Ballykissangel
Galway played a pivotal role in launching McCafferty’s acting career. Arriving at UCG (as it then was ) from Donegal in the mid-1980s, McCafferty soon became immersed in the activities of Dramsoc.
“I was very involved in Dramsoc,” he recalls over an afternoon phone call. “I served as both auditor and vice-auditor and it was during those years that I first really got into acting and began to think of it as something I wanted to pursue.”
After leaving UCG, McCafferty enrolled at Paris’ prestigious Conservatoire National Superieur d’Art Dramatique.
“Richard Cook, who is now my agent, was in Trinity at the time and, after the 1987 ISDA festival – which was a particularly strong one - he assembled an inter-varsity theatre group,” McCafferty recalls. “We went to the US and toured for three months along the east coast, we played in places like Yale. Seeing the drama departments in those colleges I saw the importance of getting proper training. Then in New York, I met another Donegal man who told me the French government gave out scholarships to foreign students to study there so I started working on getting that.
“It took a year and a half to organise and I had already started working with Druid by the time I got it. The course was hard work, but it was worth doing, it was an incredible experience.”
Mention of Druid calls to mind the string of impressive performances McCafferty delivered with the company and it’s an association he recalls fondly.
“I’ve done seven shows with Druid altogether,” he notes. “I also worked as assistant stage manager with the company when I was starting out and I really enjoyed that. I got to do a bit of everything and I was able to watch rehearsals and observe the likes of Sean McGinley, Johnny Murphy and Ray McBride. Some of my favourite plays with Druid were Black Pig’s Dyke, Sharon’s Grave, Song of the Yellow Bittern, and Ken Bourke’s Wild Harvest which is a play that could be revived, I feel. Its themes of recession, unemployment, and emigration are quite timely in today’s Ireland.”
While he has built up an impressive theatrical CV, many people will still associate him with the enduringly popular TV series Ballykissangel. Did he enjoy working on that?
“It was nice to get the job security Ballykissangel provided, though when it started none of us envisaged we’d be doing it for five years,” he replies. “The cast and crew became like a family over the years. My father died around that time and they gave me a few days off to go home for the funeral and in this business you wouldn’t always be granted that leave – ‘the show must go on’ and all that.
“It also allowed me the time to go and direct a few short films which I enjoyed. I did find the whole public recognition thing that came from the show strange and I wasn’t so gone on that but then again that fades away kind of quickly as well.”
McPherson’s booze-sodden characters
And so to The Seafarer. It’s McCafferty’s first time doing a play of Conor McPherson’s and he offers his thoughts on the character of Ivan.
“Ivan reminds me a bit of Junior in Conversations on a Homecoming,” McCafferty says. “Junior is a man with kids but he still spends his evenings with his pals in the pub and isn’t bothered about what’s happening at home. Ivan is like that as well but even more so.
“There is also a backstory with him because we learn there is something haunting him from his past that he has never faced up to. He is a stoical kind of character and has a lot of very funny lines.”
He describes McPherson’s booze-sodden characters as “all shambolic, seemingly hopeless men” but adds, “We slowly discover that maybe they aren’t entirely without hope after all. They’re complicated, well-drawn individuals. And even though the play is very dark in some regards it’s comic as well”.
I ask about the challenge of striking a balance between the seriousness of the characters’ booze addictions and the frequent comedy of their interactions.
“It can be easy to play lines for laughs, and as an actor you can be tempted to do that,” McCafferty admits. “Laughter is seductive and it’s always great to get that kind response from the audience but you have to be careful how and when you do it.
“McPherson certainly isn’t making fun of these guys’ problems with alcohol or trivialising them in any way. When we’re doing the play we have to concentrate on hitting the right notes, and Andrew Flynn is a very good director at helping us achieve that and finding the right balance between the play’s serious and comic aspects.”
The Seafarer plays the Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday November 29 to Saturday December 3 at 8pm nightly. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
