Putney Theatre Company this week present a play by one of Ireland’s greatest playwrights, The Seafarer by Conor McPherson.
Conor McPherson is well known for plays such as The Weir and The Brightening Air which had its world premiere in London last year.
Ian Higham is directing the haunting but darkly funny tale of family and friendship tinged with regret and the need for redemption.
The Seafarer was first performed at the National Theatre in 2006 with a cast that included Conleth Hill, Michael McElhatton and Jim Norton. It would go on to be nominated for multiple Tony Awards as well as the Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.
Surprisingly it has not been staged in London since the initial premiere.
Director Ian Higham said about bringing the play back to London to mark it’s 20th anniversary: “I’m delighted to be bringing this beautifully written play to the audiences of Putney. Conor McPherson is a born yarn-spinner and this exceptionally talented cast bring the characters viscerally to life, resulting in a truly unforgettable theatrical experience.”
The play centres around James ‘Sharky’ Harkin, an alcoholic who has returned to live with his blind, aging brother, Richard Harkin.
As Sharky attempts to stay off the bottle during the holidays, he contends with the hard-drinking, irascible Richard and his own haunted conscience.
The Irish World sat down to chat with the actors Eugene Duffy, from Roscommon, who plays Sharky and Ian Hickey, from Templeogue in Dublin, who plays Richard.
The cast is completed by James Turner who plays Ivan, Nick Thomas who plays Nicky and Matthew Flexman who plays Mr Lockhart.
Is The Seafarer a play you were familiar with prior to getting involved with this production?
Ian: “Yeah, it’s a play I’m very familiar with.
“It’s actually serendipitous that it came along.
“It is my favourite modern Irish play.
“When I used to work in the Abbey Theatre, it was on for two seasons and I made an effort to go in and see it almost every night just to watch the audience reactions and to watch the play because it is a bit of a roller coaster of a story and it’s a genuinely hilarious play as well.
“I’m quite familiar with the text so when the opportunity arose, I jumped at the chance to be part of it.”
Eugene: “I’ve seen three of his (McPherson) plays in London in the last year or so: The Girl from the North Country, The Brightening Air and The Weir.
“I saw all three of them and I just love his writing.
“His writing is really good, very descriptive, very normal, everyday sort of language so it’s great to actually just speak that way to each other.
“It’s very, very easy to get into the text that way.”
Sounds like you are both very familiar with the playwright. He is lauded as one of Ireland’s greatest, what does he mean to you?
Ian: “He’s obviously renowned for creating amazing monologues but then he came along and just made this piece which will have monologues in it but it has so much snappy, bitty dialogue as well that it’s just lightning, fast discussions going on as well.
“He’s created this really interesting scenario where he leans into the comedy aspect so much for something that could be dour and drab and a bit miserable but it’s comedy is at the forefront considering how dark some of the material is.”
Is the piece like The Weir for how much of it is a small group of people gather in a pub sharing stories etc while something otherworldly seems to be also taking place?
Ian: “I think in both plays characters do come from different backgrounds, of missing things in their lives and having different traumas.
“With The Weir, it comes out more in ghost stories and obviously that develops as the play goes on whereas this each character is a little lost and it’s come about in different ways.
“For one character it might have been leaving the family home.
“For another it might be just diving into a bottle and never getting out again.
“And it’s about all of this kind of bubbling out over the course of a fairly heated night that starts out very light and light hearted but as the games progress and as the evening goes on, the drama unfolds as well but it does keep that lightness where the humour comes from.
“You can have a really tense few minutes and then a character can come out with an absolutely witty one liner, bang and the audience is straight back again, ‘Right, we’re okay’.”
Eugene: “I think it’s one of those plays where the characters nearly all get equal weight to some extent.
“They all have very good characterisations.
“I don’t think there’s a simple character in there.
“They all have their own journey and, as an actor, any of these roles would be just fantastic to play in their own different ways.”
You play the brothers at the centre of the story..
Eugene: “We’re the brothers in it and it’s our old family home that now Richard resides in because he stayed around where Sharky sort of went traveling a bit so just kind of by default, I think Richard got the got the house so there might be some element of friction with that as well.”
Ian: “Richard has recently gone blind and Sharky has come home to look after him.
“Richard has kind of gone further and further into squalor and poor hygiene and just letting everything kind of rot but he still has that need for company and people and that is his strongest passion as the play goes on, just wanting to be around people and meet people.
“But the tension between the brothers is definitely that Richard, I think, enjoys a little bit too much poking his brother and the bear as often as possible.”
Eugene: “Constantly. It’s a lot of fun.
“It’s a lot of fun to play, that relationship.”
You mentioned the play The Brightening Air there, Eugene. That was a play with a family house and legacy very much at its heart. This is also about two brothers back living in the family home, are there similar themes there?
Eugene: “Yeah, I think it’s similar sort of themes there.
“It’s about family, family conflict, property, family legacy.
“There’s definitely overarching themes, albeit from a different, different sort of story there.”
McPherson mixes the supernatural with the everyday and it shows here with a man’s soul being under threat in a north Dublin pub..
Ian: “He does like to pull on Irish folklore but modernise it a little bit and that’s the beauty of this, is that it’s completely modern.
“It’s 2006, it was set when it was released.
“He definitely kind of took the concept of a tale passed on through generations which has probably obviously no real existence but he has woven that storytelling aspect into this story in a modern way.”
How does it feel to be bringing this story back to London for the first time in 20 years?
Ian: “It’s great.
“It’s actually very exciting to get to bring it to a new audience.
“I would say there’s an awful lot of Irish people that wouldn’t have seen it as well and I would hope that people that have become more familiar with McPherson in recent years, particularly after the runs in London, that they’ll get an opportunity to add to their collection of McPherson plays.
“It would be fantastic to be able to put on a good show and really show that kind of writing.”
Eugene: “Yeah, I think it is a treat to actually get to go through the story.
“It literally is a roller coaster at times just seeing people’s reactions to things as things progress so I’m actually really excited to put it in front of an audience to finally give it life again because it’s been so long since people actually have been able to see it.”
Not put on here for so long, do you feel this is a lesser known McPherson, is it unappreciated in comparison to those other plays like The Weir?
Ian: “It is surprising that it hasn’t got the resurgent love that The Weir has which would have had multiple different productions of it.
“That’s a shame considering how strong the material is, how good it is as a play.”
Eugene: “I think comparing it to a Weir is a high, high mark as well.
“The Weir has had quite a few runs in London as well so I guess that’s a high bar to reach.
“But I’d agree that it doesn’t have the exposure that The Weir has so hopefully we can put it back on the map or help to do that anyway.”
Has it been an interesting rehearsal process. Have you been discovering subtleties in the text?
Ian: “For the first couple of weeks, it was just Eugene and I so we got to build a brother relationship before the other actors came in later in the play so by the time people were arriving in, there was already this little world built.
“Ian has been a fantastic director to work with.
“Things have come out from leftfield and the tone of this way of doing it is a lot more interesting than how I would have thought originally to do it.”
Eugene: “Yeah.
“It’s great because Ian does want to get the detail right.
“He just doesn’t want to put on a show like, ‘Oh, it’s an Irish play. Let’s throw it out there’.
“He does want to get the detail right in terms of the kind of drinks that are being drank with the food that’s been ate, your crisp sandwiches and whatnot and the set itself so he really wants to get the detail right.
“And is very happy to get input from Ian and myself as well just being Irishman that we can give feedback and he takes that all on board.
“But the whole process has been great.”
Ian: “Yeah, there’s nice little visual touches on the set that people from home would go, ‘Yep, that’s very true to home’.”
Ian: “The other actors are English so we have been assisting with certain pronunciations.
“I think that the biggest obstacle we have is the pronunciation of Howth.”
Eugene: “I knew you were gonna say that.”
Ian: “Every night it’s like ‘How-th?’ ‘No, Howth’.
“They’ve been very receptive to little suggestions here and there but they’ve come on leaps and bounds with their Irish accents as well.
“They’ve got our seal of approval at least.”
Putney Arts Theatre say it is their mission to put on ‘bold, adventurous, challenging, classic’ work, this play is certainly that, isn’t it?
Ian: “Yeah, they’re definitely in for a hell of a night of theatre.
“You’re going to leave the theatre having felt like you’ve gone through the wringer of emotions in the best possible way. “You’ll feel like you got your money’s worth of theatre, absolutely.”
The Seafarer is at Putney Arts Theatre 17- 21 February.
For more information and to book, click here.