The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 more or less brought to an end a dark period of contemporary UK history.
Conaghan is a highly accomplished performer...a gifted and charismatic story -teller
The Troubles was the term given to what was regarded by many people as a three decades long, low level, civil war, the status of Northern Ireland being at stake. Opposite factions held that it should revert to Irish rule or continue as part of the UK.
The highest profile act as part of The Troubles was the attempt to assassinate the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Brighton in 1984. The hotel bomb killed five people, but not Thatcher. It had been as planted by Patrick Magee, who was released from his multiple life sentences after 14 years, as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Ruairi Conagahan’s namesake uncle – a high profile judge – had been murdered by the Provisional IRA in 1974, when he was a child. Moreover, his nine year old cousin had been clutching Conaghan’s hand at the time of the murder. All of which, of course, caused family trauma which bled through generations.
Some time later, a stage play about the Brighton hotel bombing has been developed and we learn that, by now, actor Conaghan is to play the role of Magee.
Conaghan is immediately conflicted. On the one hand, this is his chosen career, a stage performer. It is a role he understands and can perform it. Conaghan uses his theatrical training to try to get to the core of Magee. He has been tutored in Stanislavski’s method of experiencing feelings analogous to those that the character experiences. His conflict is stark and he suffers discomforting emotional recall.
Partly due to these events and deaths of others close to him, Conagahan begins to develop mental health issues, his timing being woeful, as he had just landed his dream role, playing a king in Hamlet at the National Theatre.
Conaghan is a highly accomplished performer. He is a gifted and charismatic story-teller, the audience hanging on every word. The direction (Patrick O’Kane) is adept, the production moves with pace. The script is perhaps too long and would benefit from a trim, but this is a performance which deserves our attention.
Messy Brexit arrangements threaten to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. This play is a reminder of what would be at stake.
