Actor Colin Connor told David Hennessy about starring in the Bob Dylan musical, Girl From the North Country currently showing at The Old Vic.
It has been a long way to the West End for Belfast actor Colin Connor (55).
From Andersontown in Belfast, he had set out on an acting career before at 17, he moved with his family from his conflicted home city to Stoke-on-Trent.
However, for a time he would shelve his acting ambitions before returning to them in his 30s.
Colin Connor’s stage credits include an international tour of War Horse while on screen he has appeared in Hope Street, Say Nothing and Peaky Blinders.
He is currently playing Nick Laine in the Tony and Olivier Award- winning Girl From the North Country, the Bob Dylan musical written and directed by Conor McPherson at The Old Vic.
Colin had already played the role in a UK and Ireland tour of the musical but this run represents his West End debut.
Set in Dylan’s hometown of Duluth and in the era of the Great Depression, the play centres around Nick Laine who is about to default on the mortgage for his hotel meaning that he and his family may soon have nowhere to go.
However, it is also about a group of wayward travellers finding each other — experiencing love, loss, life and everything in between, in the local guesthouse filled with music, hope and soul.
How does it feel to be back playing Nick?
“It’s brilliant.
“It’s such a great show and this particular iteration is just wonderful: The cast, where we’re doing it.
“It’s just a dream, absolute dream.
“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is.”
You were already part of a tour around UK and Ireland with the show, what was that like?
“It was fantastic.
“It was really, really, really well received and starting in Dublin was just amazing as well.
“We did four weeks at the Olympia and the highlight for me was obviously doing the Opera House in Belfast.
“It was so emotional.
“My father passed last year but he was able to come and see it.
“That was one of the highlights of my career.
“And then to top it off to come to the Old Vic and do it, it’s just incredible, such a privilege.”
What is it like to have the playwright himself Conor McPherson directing you?
“He’s amazing. He’s so, so cool.
“And because you’re working with the person who’s written what you’re saying they know what they want.
“They know what they expect to see.
“But even though he directed the tour, he’s still adding things now. Coming back three years later, he’s still adding little things.
“He’s still keeping it fresh and exciting.
“When you’re working with somebody and it’s their piece, you just want to do the best for them.
“And he’s so gentle the way he deals with people.
“I can’t say enough good about him to be honest with you.
“He’s just fantastic.
“So generous: He’s giving you this gift. He’s passing it on to you and trusting you with it.
“It’s beautiful.”
You’ve been an admirer of his work, haven’t you? I mean, you’ve even directed the Weir, have you not?
“Yeah, me and my wife have our own production company and we have a pub theatre in Manchester.
“We actually did a production of The Weir and we did it in the pub.
“The audience was sitting there in the pub and the actors were at the bar and behind the bar, it was great.
“You do that and then a few years later, you’re working with the man himself.
“It’s like you have to try and be cool and not be a fan boy.”
Is he Ireland’s greatest playwright?
“He is definitely one of them, and the modern ones, and he’s so easy going.
“I mean, easy to talk to, kind, generous.
“I think he’s a bit of a genius really and a very, very kind and gentle man.
“He has a big heart so that comes out in his writing as well, I think.
“And very mythical.
“There’s always something really intriguing and he’s intrigued with the supernatural and stuff.
“I think he’s definitely up there, one of the greats.”
What was it about the play that first spoke to you and made you want to play Nick?
“It’s so rich.
“It’s like a piece of classic American theatre like a Miller.
“I’ve done a few Millers in my time.
“I’ve done A View from a Bridge and it’s just the richness in the writing.
“I’m not a musical theatre person but the songs are selected so beautifully and it doesn’t feel like a piece of musical theatre, it just feels like this wonderful piece of theatre and these songs are just placed at the right time. They lift the piece and they’re the emotional heart of it.
“He’s such a frustrating character to play because everything’s just pent up inside.
“My emotions are very close to the surface but he’s just so stoic and keeps everything pent up inside.
“He’s just trying to get through and get by so it’s hard to keep all that in, and you’re so separated from everybody else.
“Even though it’s all centred around you, you’re separated.
“He doesn’t get the joy of joining in any of the songs or the dances and stuff so it can be quite difficult at times because you do feel separated from the sweetness of the piece.”
What is it like to play Nick? Is it draining? It it tough?
“It is tough.
“When you give yourself to a role- and without sounding too actor or anything- It affects you.
“It does get into your mind and there’s no release for Nick, like I say, when people are dancing and singing, there’s joy in that and that’s where the emotional heart is and Nick doesn’t get that so there’s no release.”
There’s a story behind every door, happy or sad, isn’t there?
“Yeah, I think some people find it difficult to follow, ‘I don’t know what’s going on..’
“And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know if you’re meant to know’.
“And they’re like, ‘There’s no resolution…’
“And again I don’t think there has to be.
“It’s just these lovely vignettes of these people just passing through this guest house.
“I think it’s the genius of Conor’s writing, where he set it and how he just invites you into these stories and then just leaves you with unanswered questions.
“I think people want the resolution to things too much sometimes.
“I think that’s the beauty of it, that there isn’t. It just keeps you hanging on and keeps you talking about it which I love.”
Where does this experience rank among other things you have done?
“This is the pinnacle.
“This is the top.
“It was a long journey back to acting for me, it did stop for a period, and other things took over.
“And it’s been a long way back.
“I’ve been back doing it over 20, nearly 25 years but between moving to England and getting back to it was tough.
“I was quite emotional on press night.
“I was sitting with the guys in the dressing room.
“I was like, ‘This is my West End debut’.
“They were like, ‘Really?’
“I was like, ‘Yeah’.
“It just means the world to me.
“Every night in the warm up, I go and sit in a seat in the auditorium and I say, ‘This is where my mum would have sat’.
“And I just think about her and I think how proud she would have been.
“If I never do anything again, then I’ve achieved something.
“Conor has given me the gift of being able to do this.”
As you say you gave up acting for a time, why was that? Did you have to shelve those dreams?
“I was in a relationship and had a child.
“It just wasn’t viable.
“It caused a great deal of stress and then when that relationship had ended and my mother had passed I just decided, ‘I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to see. I’ve got to put this to bed, this thing that I did as a young person, as a young man. Is it real?’
“And that’s when I returned to drama school when I was 31 just to see if I could make a living doing this and exorcising this demon almost inside me.
“And I’ve never looked back since in 23, 24 years.
“I haven’t looked back.
“I made the right choice.”
Before this show, were you always a fan of Bob Dylan?
“I wouldn’t say I was a fan.
“My daughter came to see it yesterday and she’s only eight.
“She’s fallen in love with the music.
“So not only have I become a fan but my eight-year-old daughter is now a fan of the music which is brilliant.
“It just shows you how universal it is.
“She’s normally listening to Kylie.”
Conor has described the play as having a relevance to the uncertain times, do you think it has something to say about our current times?
“I think it definitely does.
“The character Mr. Burke, played by David Ganly, does this speech about the current president, about FDR (Franklin D Roosevelt) and he says, ‘I don’t care who’s in charge as long as he’s a strong man. I don’t care if he’s good or bad as long as he’s strong’.
“And it has such resonance with what’s going on in America at the moment and people’s thinking of, ‘It doesn’t matter as long as he seems strong’.
“It has such resonance today and it strikes me every night.
“I think, ‘Oh my God’.
“It says a lot about today. It really does.
“I mean, everybody’s suffering hardship: The cost of living and just trying to get by.
“And it does make people withdraw.
“And it attacks society and makes people selfish but understandably so because you have to worry about yourself and just get by day to day.
“And that’s what’s happening in the play, everybody’s just trying to get by, just trying to get through.
“And there’s these lovely vignettes of just individual people just trying to get by in their own way.
“You’re just trying to survive.”
Does it also remind you of the uncertain times you grew up in in Belfast?
“Yeah, it does.
“I follow the news back home and still some things that are going on are so frustrating.
“The recent attacks on immigrants and stuff.
“How can people where I grew up be like that? Go through what we went through and then start punching down on other people?
“I grew up during the hunger strikes, during the height of the troubles so it does make me think of the social injustice and struggles that my family and my parents’ families went through.”
Was it the case that you had to leave Belfast?
“I think for my parents, it was
“My mum and dad sold their house and then we ended up in Stoke-on-Trent of all places.
“It sounded like we were the only Irish people in Stoke.
“The diaspora hadn’t quite made it to Stoke until we got there.
“That was just a strange time.
“I was a 17-year-old and I’d already started a career in acting and had a career as a stand up going around the working men’s clubs in Belfast.
“I stayed for a while when my parents first moved but I suppose I needed my mum and so decided to move with them.
“It was just a strange thing.
“It’s not like you were moving as a kid and you’re not quite an adult either and suddenly you’re in this like provincial town in the middle of England with this broad Belfast accent.
“It was a strange time in my life but I suppose it was the making of me in a way as well.
“The girls loved the accent so that worked out well for me.”
I bet the accent also caused some trouble at those times too though, didn’t it?
“I wouldn’t say I was particularly political, it made me realise who I was and where I was from.
“It politicised me and made me proud of where I was from and who I was.
“We were never a Republican family but we were very much Irish nationalists: Went to the Christian Brothers School, played Gaelic football, played hurling.
“It made me proud of who I was when I moved there.
“One particular case me and my brother were told to get our fists out, called IRA bastards.
“That was an interesting experience.
“Not everybody was like that but when things happened back home, you would be wary how people would react to you and what would happen.
“But it was the making of me really and probably made me more Irish than I’d ever been to be honest.”
It must be different returning to Northern Ireland now…
“My brother in law and sister in law really wanted to go to Belfast so me and my wife took them in February, and I was in Belfast as a tourist.
“It was brilliant, so cool.
“So cool to see so many different people from the UK and all over in Belfast as tourists, it was brilliant.
“We ended up in Kelly Cellars, that’s one place I remembered and that was brilliant.
“Funnily enough we ended up talking to two people and they were from stoke.
“I was back in Belfast as a tourist and I started doing the Stoke accent for them and everything.
“I took them to the Causeway Coast and to the Titanic museum.
“Honestly, I was in awe of the place to be quite honest, so different and for the better.
“I used to say to people, ‘It’s never going to change in my lifetime’.
“And here I am very much still alive and proud to be from such a beautiful place.”
You have got to go back to work on things like Hope Street and Say Nothing..
“Don’t say anything but Say Nothing was filmed in a studio in Watford.
“When I went to do that, they built the streets.
“They had a burnt out number 13 city bus which I took to school and went to the CBS the Glen road.
“When I walked on set I was like, ‘Oh, my God’.
“I might as well have been in Belfast but unfortunately I wasn’t.
“But Hope Street was a lovely experience.
“That was great.”
You have a pub and theatre in Manchester, The King’s Arms. Does it do Irish plays and bring in the Irish community?
“We did Brian Friel’s Faith Healer in January.
“And I had my own play Meanwhile a few years ago, which I might revive which is about the little football team we had as kids growing up in Belfast juxtaposed with extracts from Bobby Sands’ diary that he kept for the first 60 days of his hunger strike.
“It was just about how kids growing up in civil unrest, civil war are still kids essentially.
“When you think about kids in Palestine, they’re still trying to be children given the chance.
“There’s a great, great Irish community that we tap into and we always try and do something around the Irish festival around St Patrick’s Day.
“And we serve the best Guinness in Manchester.”
Any final words on Girl From the North Country?
“It’s a great show and if anybody hasn’t seen it, get to see it now before it finishes on 23 August, you won’t be disappointed.
“You’ll have a great night.
“People are on their feet every night so get to see it if you can.”
Girl From the North Country is at The Old Vic until 23 August.
For more information and to book, click here.
