Eoin McAndrew tells David Hennessy about his award- winning play Little Brother that opens at Soho Theatre this week.
Eoin McAndrew’s Little Brother opens this week at Soho Theatre.
Eoin McAndrew is a 31- year- old playwright from Craigavon, Co. Armagh and based in London.
Little Brother is McAndrew’s 2024 Verity Bargate Award winning play.
Launched in 1982, the Verity Bargate Award is Soho Theatre’s prestigious biennial new writing award, sponsored by Character 7, and is one of the longest-established playwriting awards in the UK.
The award’s main prize is an £8,000 prize and a fully staged production at Soho Theatre. The 2024 judging panel, chaired by Character 7’s Stephen Garrett, was composed of industry experts: Moira Buffini, Anupama Chandrasekhar, Alan Cumming, Anthony Lau and Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem.
Little Brother finds Brigid’s phone ringing at 3am. Her brother Niall is by the river with a plastic bag and lighter fluid.
It is a play about sibling love, self-destruction and what it means to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
Set in modern-day Belfast, it asks what happens when the systems designed to help us fall short, and love is doing more heavy lifting than it should.
Directed by Emma Jordan, the siblings in the story are played by Catherine Rees and Cormac McAlinden while the cast is completed by Conor O’Donnell and Laura Dos Santos.
Catherine Rees was part of the cast for Theatre503’s Derry Boys which was featured in The Irish World earlier this year.
Cormac McAlinden has just graduated the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. He was the winner of The Laurence Olivier Bursary by the Society of London Theatre.
What inspired Little Brother?
“I just wanted to write something about a brother and a sister relationship.
“I feel like it’s maybe something I don’t see all that much, that incredibly close sibling thing.
“Also to have a really close sibling is someone that you love but also can annoy you more than anyone else in the world.
“I kind of wanted to play around with that a wee bit.
“It kind of started as, ‘What would these central two characters be? What would that dynamic be?’
“And then the idea of people setting themselves on fire came quite organically out of that and then from that, you build a world or build some sort of imagined reality from it with them at the centre.”
There are a lot of themes in the play but the sister/ brother relationship is paramount, isn’t it?
“100%, that’s the steel at the centre of it and, in casting and stuff, that’s what we wanted to get.
“And the two actors we got, Cormac and Catherine, it’s their relationship and their dynamic: Without that, there’s no play and so that was super important to us.”
The main characters are played by two Northern Irish actors? Is that important for the shorthand?
“Yes, they are.
“Three of our actors are Northern Irish and one is of Irish heritage.
“And to be honest, it was important to me.
“I don’t even know is this an Irish play or a Northern Irish play or what, but it’s set in Northern Ireland.
“Our director is Northern Irish and I kind of felt like it would be different Northern Irish voices and to hear them on stage and doing dialogue that you don’t always hear our accent do maybe.
“One of the questions I got asked is, ‘Why is it set in Northern Ireland?’
“And I don’t have a good answer to that.
“Why is anything set anywhere?
“It’s set in Northern Ireland and these characters are Northern Irish.
“So that was important to me, yeah.”
It’s particular to Northern Ireland and to the current post- conflict time. It may be easy for others to say the troubles are over but it is not as simple as that..
“People in the world of the play are setting themselves on fire and what I wanted to do is to present the question of, ‘Well, why is that?’
“And then to maybe give a bunch of different answers and not to completely go down one road or another, or people just have different ideas and some of those range from a culture of repression or a post conflict society or it is a literal economic reality.
“People have lots of different views and there are different factors.
“I kind of wanted to have different characters express those feelings in different parts of the play and champion their beliefs or champion their viewpoints without necessarily the play being like, ‘This is exactly what is happening and these are the root causes’.”
How has Northern Ireland changed in your lifetime?
“I feel like home is changing very rapidly.
“It is very different from it was 10 years ago.
“I moved over to England about 10 years ago. I feel like it’s changed so much since then and so from 20, 30 years ago, the change is astronomic.
“I feel like there are these things happening.
“There’s things still holding over and I knew I wouldn’t be qualified to speak to their causes but there is a crisis in mental health.
“That’s not specific to Northern Ireland but I guess it is specific to this play.”
How did you find writing about mental health? It is more discussed these days..
“Well, I think it’s just people have a vocabulary for it in a way they maybe didn’t have in years past.
“But then again, there are practical things.
“There are systems and organisations that need to be funded in order to make an actual impact.
“I think it’s something that I kind of come back to a lot because loads of stuff can be under the banner of mental health whereas I think this specific play is probably about chronic self harm which makes it hard to get across that it’s supposed to be funny, but I think it (the play) kind of is.
“I feel like this piece specifically is about that and about the root causes of that.
“Mental health is so many different things and if you’re not specific about it, then it can just be vague and generalised whereas I wanted this to be about a really specific thing and a really specific character.”
Does it come with a responsibility?
“I think there is a responsibility and I think people will have different markers of taste in what’s appropriate to show and what isn’t appropriate.
“But I feel like all you can do is try and get a sense of what the reality of this is.
“Even if we’re in a slightly heightened world, all you can do is be like, ‘This is more or less the feeling of that’.
“I think basically the play would be unwatchable or very, very difficult to sit through if it was very realistic about very specific types of self harm.
“You lose something in it being so visceral whereas this world of the play is like people set themselves on fire, people burn themselves and I thought that’s slightly more fantastical or not entirely set in our world.
“I thought the more fantastical version of it would open this up to be able to make the jokes about it or to kind of go in a little bit on this and to be able to sit with it in a way that is not completely alienating for an audience.”
The themes the play deals with may not sound like comedy fodder but it is such a Northern Irish trait to find humour in unexpected places..
“I hope the play is funny.
“I think it is but I feel like there is an incredibly dark comedy to it.
“And it’s like, ‘Well, is this funny?’
“It’s like, ‘I don’t know, is your life funny?’
“The answer is your life can be incredibly sad, incredibly funny, one after the other and sometimes simultaneously.
“I think that’s kind of what you want to kind of hone in on if you’re writing something.
“One of the stage directions is that none of these characters cry and that was just another intentional thing of being like, ‘I want this to move fast and to have a very dark humour to it. It has a bit of heart but I don’t think it’s maudlin and I don’t think it’s sentimental.
“I think we’re moving very quickly and with a kind of jolt through a few different things.”
Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Alan Cumming said of the play, ‘Like its location, this play knows troubles but manages to remind us that love will win.’”
How do you like that description?
“I like the idea of love winning because basically what else have you got? What other hope is there?
“I don’t think this is a play about the troubles even though that obviously is a context that any story set in Northern Ireland has.”
Alan made that comment as he was part of the panel of judges for the Verity Bargate Award, how did it feel to land such a prize?
“It honestly blew me away. So completely unexpected.
“I have literally won a competition and now I get to be in the room with these incredible artists like our wonderful director, sound designer, designers, our actors.
“I literally feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory like, ‘Oh, I just won this thing, and now it gets to happen’.
“I don’t take that for granted because it is a once in a lifetime thing so you’ve just got it.
“It came out of nowhere and has been such a massive thing in my life so I feel like I’m just trying to enjoy it and really appreciate what it is because these things don’t come around every day.”
Preparing to present a play at Soho Theatre, is this your biggest moment yet?
“Oh yeah, 100%.
“The last time we talked, I was working on Girl and we were a very small team doing that, a wonderful team but we were a really small team whereas this production has machinery around it and has lots of people working on it so I think you’re also very aware of that lots of talented people are doing their best work piecing this together.
“There’s so much stuff that goes on that I am probably completely unaware of and I have no understanding of so you just feel like, ‘Oh, sh*t. It’s happening. This is going to be a big production’.
“I think it’s just like the thrill of getting to see this world on stage and these characters.
“I feel like the script is not a blueprint, it’s more like a starting point.
“A script is like just the impetus and then a production is built around it and they take your like thing and make it into a novel with loads of people contributing so even though I wrote the script, you kind of have no idea what the final thing will be and that’s pretty exciting to me.”
Are you interested to see what conversations it starts up?
“Yeah, I think it’s always scary because you’re putting something out there and some people might be like, ‘No, that’s not representative of my experience’.
“Or they might be like, ‘Yes, that exactly gets that right’ and you just don’t know and you can’t guess.
“All you can kind of do is try and write in earnest and try and write as much from a place of feeling as you can.
“It’s very interesting.
“I would be stupid if I said I wasn’t nervous because it’s a personal play.
“I think most plays are personal.
“And you want everyone to like everything you do all the time, but that’s unrealistic.
“And also, why should that be the case?
“You just gotta keep making stuff and try and make something that feels bit honest and feels a bit and gives people an experience.”
Rachael Rooney, who starred in The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying, is about to star in Crocodile Fever at Arcola Theatre..
“She’s amazing.”
Catherine Rees from the cast was also part of the cast for Derry Boys earlier this year.
There is a lot of material coming from Northern Ireland..
“There’s loads coming out.
“And also when we were auditioning for this, we saw so many fantastic Northern Irish and Irish actors.
“The quality was so high.
“We really were kind of blown away by the people we were meeting and I just feel like it’s an exciting time.
“I feel like there is an interest in Irish and Northern Irish stories and also the different kind of creative arts that come out of there.
“I feel like, in some ways, it’s long overdue.
“I think a couple big, high profile things probably helped that but I’m very excited to see where it goes.
“It is like the plurality of voices, isn’t it?
“It’s just like lots of different voices from the same place will tell lots of different stories and I think that’s just going to diversify and change as it keeps going.”
The Girl That Was Very Good at Lying came from your surprise at people’s lack of knowledge about Ireland, does that also feed into Little Brother?
“Obviously the world of the play is set in is where people set themselves on fire.
“That’s the kind of the premise of it.
“And a lot of the reactions we got from people reading the script was, ‘Oh, I didn’t know people set themselves on fire in Northern Ireland’.
“And people being like, ‘Oh, that happens? Like every day people are doing that?’
“And well why are they so quick to believe that?
“I think there’s definitely a continuation from Girl in that way being like, ‘This is set in Northern Ireland but it’s not quite our world’.
“And if it was set in London, everyone would be like, ‘Oh, of course it’s like a magical realist play’.
“Because it’s set in Northern Ireland they’re like, ‘Oh wow, that’s crazy what’s happening over there’.
“I remember reading somewhere about people watching Banshees of Inisherin and being like, ‘Oh, is this set in present day just in a really rural place?’
“The setting is at least in Northern Ireland and it’s a normal place and there’s a cultural specificity, but it is just like a place.
“If you’re writing about a place, I guess sometimes even if you’re ridiculing certain stereotypes, there’s always a chance that you end up perpetuating them yourself.
“I don’t know.
“I feel like you have to engage with what the cultural understanding of a place or a thing is.
“I feel like I’m proud of the production and I’m excited to see what people think and I’m learning that you can’t control that.”
Little Brother is at Soho Theatre until 22 November.
For more information, click here.
