John Merrigan and Danielle Morgan told David Hennessy about brining their Phil Lynott musical Moonlight to the UK stage.
Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma is coming to the UK to the Hammersmith Apollo 50 years after Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous album was partly recorded there.
Phil was the charismatic leader of Thin Lizzy known for classics like The Boys Are Back in Town, Jailbreak and Whiskey in the Jar.
His last years were plagued by drug and alcohol addiction.
He died in 1986, aged just 36.
Moonlight aims to explore Philip’s formative years, his struggles, his legacy and inspiration to musicians around the world and to honour him as an Irish poet.
Peter M. Smith leads the cast as Lynott with support from Padraic O Loingsigh as Brendan Behan and Riley Clark playing Oscar Wilde.
Thin Lizzy co-founder/gui tarist Eric Bell plays himself. Luke Hayden plays ‘The Land lord’, John Newcombe plays ‘The Journalist’ while Jason Figgis directs.
Mazz Murray will join the cast for this London show to play Philomena, Phil’s late mother.
The show was devised by John Merrigan and Danielle Morgan.
Irish World readers may recall John and Danielle from the reading they staged in 2023 at The Irish Cultural Centre in Hammer smith, Brendan: Son of Dublin, which starred Darragh O’Malley as Brendan Behan.
An earlier work of theirs, Vengeance, was about Oscar Wilde.
Moonlight has Lynott, Behan and Wilde meeting in the afterlife.
Writers and producers John and Danielle spoke to The Irish World about Moonlight’s forth coming British tour.
Where did the idea come from?
John: “It’s a lifetime story re ally.
“I always remember how much the music of Thin Lizzy moved me and how much the character of Philip Lynott inspired me.
“There wasn’t a lot going on in Dublin back in those days and music was a bit of an escape, so the seeds of it started around then.
“Fast forward to a dream I had one night of the ‘Men in Black’ – Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Philip Lynott.
“I wondered what it would be like if they had a conversation and thought it would be interesting to explore.
“But I didn’t know too much about Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, but I do know a bit about Philip Lynott.
“I got into the whole thing about Philip being a poet and wondered if there were any threads that bind Wilde, Behan and Lynott them and very quickly we found there were.
“They were three fellas from Dublin, they went out to the world and brought their gift and their art, they left Ireland but always had a connection with Dublin, they all struggled with fame and fortune, and they left us a legacy – and they all died way too young.
“Oscar was 46 when he died, Brendan Behan was 41 and, of course, Philip was only 36.
“As you know, we took on Oscar Wilde in our production Vengeance and Brendan Behan in Brendan: Son of Dublin and this third part and is the one I feel clos est to, Philip Lynott.”
Danielle: “I remember the day when John said, ‘I’m going to do something on Oscar’. Grand, great, brilliant.
“’I’m going to do something on Brendan’. Brilliant.
“And then he says, ‘I want to do something on Philip Lynott.
“I went, ‘Brilliant’.
“And then he said, ‘No, no, I want to put them all together. Do you think you can knock up some songs?’
“And I was like, ‘For what?’
“He’s like, ‘This project I told you about with Brendan, Oscar, Philip Lynott’.
“By trade I’m a singer, I play keys and I write songs.
“I was scratching my brain. I was like, ‘I don’t understand’ and said, ‘but I love you and it’s never going to be boring so let’s go for it’.
“I thought he was crazy, but when I read the script, I was like, ‘Okay, I get this now. This has got real depth. This has got real structure. This is historically factual and there is a thread from Oscar to Brendan to Philip’.
“We just took a punt, and I trusted John and his writing, he trusted me and somehow this crazy project was born.
“Everyone we approached initially was like, ‘Huh? Oscar Wilde and Philip Lynott in the same room, how?’
“I don’t think anybody really, really got it until it went live at Vicar Street.
“They could then understand where we were coming from.”
John: “They’re interesting Irish characters, serious artists but flawed. They lived the life.
“My mother used to say to me, ‘If you want to understand the art, you have to understand the artist’.
“The writing of the play only took 10 days, but it was a lifetime getting there.
“We’ve done hundreds of interviews with people who knew Philip.
“In particular, I’d highlight the discussions I had with Eric Bell, one of the founders of Thin Lizzy. He really opened.
“He said, ‘Nobody ever asked me questions you’re asking, John. Nobody has ever tried to get into the story that way’.
“And then I asked him if he would like to be part of the project on stage.
“He was delighted. He brings authenticity because he was in the room when a lot of the events happened and that’s why the story telling just came out – because we did our research, we contacted all sorts of people who were in the room, be it the producers of his music, his friends.
“We met these people and told them what we’re trying to do.
“People were so nice in their co-operation and giving us insights between the lines, away from the headlines.
“It’s not just reciting some Thin Lizzy songs although obviously Thin Lizzy’s songs are there.
“We get very emotional every time we see the show performed. Thank God, the audiences get emotional too.
“We’ve now played to 8,000 people and Thin Lizzy fans are tough.
“Philip is an icon, a God, to them and we must be very respectful of that but, at the same time, we must not shy away from aspects of the story they didn’t know.
“We’ve had rockers in black leather jackets with chains and everything else coming up to us after the show crying.
“They said, ‘You’ve shown us a side of Philip we never knew and now we appreciate him even more.
“It was important to find an actor who could play Philip Lynott authentically and we found Peter M Smith.
“Peter is just so authentic and talented and in lots of ways was born for this role.
“His own backstory is very similar to Philip’s, when he goes on the stage, he just brings Philip back to life.
“Even people who were very close to Philip were amazed.”
Danielle: “It took us a year to cast. Don’t get me wrong, we had so much incredible talent in the room, but nobody could tick every single box and then when we, by accident, found Peter M Smith the minute we saw him, that was it.”
John: “It was the most difficult and the easiest casting decision we had to make, casting Peter.
“In all the performances we’ve done, we have been absolutely blown away by the fact you can hear a pin drop when the cast are talking, you can hear the audience hanging on every word.
“On the first night at Vicar Street, we were terrified because we were in the belly of the beast.”
Danielle: “That was a massive gamble.”
John: “It was a huge gamble, but we said we have to start there – that’s where the story started’.
“I told the stage manager to keep the engine running outside the stage door in case we needed to run out but within minutes people just bought into it.
“We’ve tried it out in different venues, locations, cities and the reaction is the same.”
Bringing to Hammersmith, where he famously played, and to Birmingham, not far from West Bromwich where he was born, you are brining the play to significant places in Phil’s life..
John: “Exactly. The Hammersmith Apollo is the biggest venue in London but it’s also a very special connection to Thin Lizzy in that some of the songs they recorded for the Live and Dangerous album back in 1976, 50 years ago, were recorded at the Hammersmith Apollo. It’s a fabulous venue.
“It will be very poignant to bring Philip Lynott back there and then to the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham.
“Similar to where the story started in Dublin, we bring it full circle back to Birmingham and we’re very excited about that.
“We’ve got dates in Newcastle and Glasgow, and other dates are under discussion.
“Going to places like Newcastle, there’s a connection because Thin Lizzy supported Slade in 1972, that was a huge event for them.
“Slade’s manager Chas Chandler really gave them a tough time after that show and it was one of the milestones for Philip in his transformation as a rocker – Philip started to fill his shoes as a front man.
“Those are very special connections with the venues and locations; we hope that adds to the excitement.”
On this journey what did you learn about Phil that surprised you?
Danielle: “We spoke to hundreds of people who knew him – we didn’t find one person say a bad word about him, not one person.
“What’s come across is he was a kind, shy, gentle soul who was very generous and who wanted to look after people – not one bad word.
“That surprised me because, obviously, in the industry and being rich and famous, you hear stories all the time that people are not always the nicest when the cameras stop rolling.
“For me, that was important.
“There’s a warmth to him I really took to and that’s why I became quite emotionally involved in the project, because I liked him, didn’t just respect him as a poet and musician, I liked him as a person.”
John: “For me, it was how brave he was and some of his contemporaries, to leave Dublin, with nothing in their pockets and take their chances on the world stage.
“Things were tough and he had the courage and perseverance to do that.
“Developing your art, your work, takes time to do it properly and he stuck with it.
“He had a lot of setbacks when you look at his colour, his back-ground, his Irishness, problems with his vocals, he had a lot of blows on the way.
“What comes across is his determination in his own terms, in his own right.
“He said, ‘I don’t have to walk over people to get to where I want but I know where I want to get to and get out of my way if you’ve any sense’.
“He didn’t have to do it at the expense of people.
“If you look at all the interviews that Philip did, it’s incredible how a lot of ill informed, silly questions were asked of him in interviews, and not once did I ever see him lose it.
“He was just polite and calm and strong, and everyone got it.
“By the end of an interview people would go, ‘Okay’.
“People would ask him silly questions to get a rise; they’d ask about his colour or his Irishness or about politics and he would always bring it back to his art.
“He would always bring it back to, ‘This is about the music. I want to tell my story in the music’.”
Neither Lynott, Behan nor Wilde were very comfortable with fame, did they know how timeless their work would become?
Danielle: “Eric Bell touches on that. He says that when they were in a living room playing music and working on their songs they never, ever knew where it would go.
“They never knew all these years later the music would still be recognised and played so there was a genuine, ‘Look, we’re just doing this for the art, let’s see where it goes’.
“They weren’t expecting what happened which makes it genuine.”
John: “Behan and Philip Lynott came from the same background, working-class outsiders who wanted to tell their story either through their writing or through their music.
“They’d be laughing their heads off these days if they saw how people analyse them and t their work.
“But the thing they’d like most is that they’re still relevant, they’re still in conversations.
“You can walk around Dublin and in musical conversations, people are still talking regularly about Philip Lynott.
“All these groups from Huey Lewis to Metallica trace their musical in-spiration, at least in part, to Philip Lynott.”
Moonlight- The Philip Lynott Enigma comes to Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith on Sunday 29 March, Pavilion Theatre Glasgow on 20 May, Tyne Theatre and Opera House in Newcastle on Thursday 21 May and The Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham on Saturday 23 May.
