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Dancing At Lughnasa

Daragh O’Malley is probably best known for his portrayal of Patrick Harper in the Sharpe TV series. During his career, he has worked alongside and met actors, such as Marlon Brando and Tom Cruise.

Daragh will be on stage at the Devonshire Park Theatre this month as missionary priest Father Jack in the Original Theatre Company’s touring production of Dancing At Lughnasa by Brian Friel.

Set in the remote Irish village of Ballybeg, the narrator Michael looks back at the fateful summer of 1936 with his mother and aunts the five Mundy sisters, his recently returned uncle Father Jack, and a wireless set they call Marconi.

CQ asks Daragh about Father Jack, and why he has decided to tread the boards.

CQ: You were taught by Jesuits and Carmelite monks at school. Father Jack is a missionary priest. How has your experience helped with understanding Father Jack and bringing him to life on stage? What attracted you to the part and do you share any characteristics with your character?

DM: As an actor one does try, where possible, to draw on life’s experiences and cherry pick moments and emotions that one has experienced in life that might be relevant to a given role. With Father Jack in Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa, I had some excellent references to work with insofar as I had met several priests – several were Jesuits and Carmelite monks who had returned from the Missions and taught me at school – who had given most of their working lives to assisting the less well off in the killing fields of Africa and beyond. Not all missionaries came out of Africa unscathed – the scars are there and the pain, while not always obvious, is in their hearts and in their souls.

I have tried to give Father Jack a caring soul. Father Jack is a very damaged human being when audiences meet him for the first time, as are each of his five sisters in varying degrees. Father Jack returns to Donegal after 25 years but he has left his heart in the loving care of the people of Uganda. He quickly realises life in Donegal is lifeless and totally loveless and, when he realises he will never see Uganda and its people again, he decides to die.

CQ: How relevant is the play to what is happening in Ireland today?

DM: Dancing At Lughnasa depicts an Ireland that is a cultural and economic wasteland fuelled by a seething poverty of spirit among the natives and a toxic sexual repression – choking to death from subservience to the Catholic Church. Rural Ireland still has many problems. The arrival of drugs into villages and towns, the collapse of farming specifically and the economy in general, and the upsurge in emigration are contributing to a very difficult period in Irish history.

CQ: You’ve done a lot of TV work in the past. Why have you decided to tread the boards?

DM: We are all cave people really – we will always love to gather round in dark places and have people tell us stories. Great theatre is one of the great joys of life and Dancing At Lughnasa is great theatre in its purest form – it’s storytelling at its best. I am so very lucky to be part of this wonderful production.

See Daragh O’Malley at the Devonshire Park Theatre from Tue 8-Sat 12 March.

Want to know what it’s really like on the road? Read the production’s understudy’s tour blog.

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2 Comments

1. [...] weeks in I’ve got the location manager of Brighton Rock, Jason Wheeler, and Daragh O’Malley, who is staring in Dancing at [...]

   Pingback by My day job « teacup and cake — March 10, 2011 @ 10:05 pm

2. [...] favourable write-ups from the press and giving interviews as he goes. Read them some of them in Cultural Quarterly Online, The Argus (Eastbourne). Morning Star (York), along with some wonderful production shots from The [...]

   Pingback by The Sharpe Chefs » Daragh O’Malley Conquers the UK — March 13, 2011 @ 10:44 am

 

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