Aidan Dooley's long march to Leitrim
The Galway-born UK-based writer and actor is returning to Cork’s Everyman Theatre with the epic story of Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beara, the last rebel left standing against the British crown after the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
Dooley, who first performed the show at the Gougane Barra Hotel in 2010 and brought it to the Everyman Theatre in 2011, hopes that when his revised show opens on September 11, it will have the magic ingredient that turned his Tom Crean story into such a success.
The new show incorporates Celtic myths, storytelling and an original score, Dooley admits that O’Sullivan Beara is a more difficult man to imagine than Crean, as there are only scant historical facts recorded about this Gaelic chieftain.
Refusing to accept defeat at the hand of Queen Elizabeth 1, he led the famous and tragic march with the clans of Beara to Co Leitrim in 1602/3. Some 1,000 people took part, with only 35 marchers making it to the destination. The posse was attacked by enemies, defeated by the elements, and some marchers deserted along the arduous journey.
Dooley is dispensing with the interval that was part of the show. He has also “made the character much more interactive with the audience, like how I started to build the Tom Crean show. I’m making sure the audience will be with me and will have an emotional connection to the character.
With Tom Crean, I had that charming connectivity with the audience which made them concerned about what happened to the man. Tom Crean was likeable. I’m trying to make O’Sullivan Beara likeable. But no personality comes through the history pages.
“I’m endeavouring to create a three-dimensional person, which I failed to do in the previous incarnation of the show. Now, I think there’s more to be got out of the character,” he says.
Dooley sees O’Sullivan Beara as a figure caught up in a terrible dilemma.
“There’s the enemy who is willing to slaughter every single one of the people on the march, including a new born baby. I’m trying to impress on a modern audience the dire situation O’Sullivan and his people were in. But at least, he got to his destination,” he says.
On a practical level, Dooley is keen to impart the realities of the actual march.
“These people travelled at the pace of a horse through land that had no tracks and no roadways. They went across bogs and uneven ground in winter. They were actually half running.
“They had to do the equivalent of a marathon every day in eight hours of daylight for 14 days. Of the women and children on the march, only one woman, who was in her 70s, made it to Leitrim.” Dooley is sanguine about the fact that his second show may never emulate the success of Tom Crean.
“O’Sullivan Beara may not have the elements that made Crean so popular, or he might, with the centenary of 1916 coming up. Our sense of identity is tied up in the character.”
When Tom Crean “hit the scene over 10 or 12 years ago, the country was buoyant. But the show wasn’t initially the big hit it became.
“But when people started coming back a second time, the momentum grew. I’m not saying that will happen with O’Sullivan Beara.”
But Dooley is quietly confident.
