Guests of the Nation: Kevin Barry on adapting Frank O'Connor's classic tale
Kevin Barry has helped adapt Guests Of The Nation for Cork Midsummer Festival.
When Kevin Barry needs a break from the scribing, he gets up from his desk, grabs a hurley and goes outside to beat a sliothar against the shed wall. He doesn’t say if he dons a jersey for the session, but if he did, he’d have no shortage of options.
The green of Limerick, the city where he was born in 1969, is the obvious choice. But then again, Barry spent plenty of formative years in Cork from the early 1990s, and it’s a place he constantly goes back to in his books. Or he might even opt for Sligo, as it’s in the southern part of the Yeats County that he’s made his home in an old RIC barracks since 2006.
Let’s presume the blood and bandages of the Rebels has taken his fancy recently. Not least as he’s been knee-deep adapting the work of one of the county’s most famous son — Guests Of The Nation, the first short story from the debut collection by Frank O’Connor. Originally published in 1931, the tale of two British soldiers captured by the IRA during the War of Independence draws on O’Connor’s own experiences in the era, and is often acclaimed as a classic of the short form.
Barry has teamed up with theatre company Corcadorca to dramatise the story as one of the flagship events for Cork Midsummer Festival. Rather than a straight-up version, however, he warns of a “loose adaptation”.
It’ll be the type of promenade production that Corcadorca and director Pat Kiernan have become renowned for, with the audience strolling from Cork Opera House to Triskel Arts Centre to see the various scenes. And, while all but one of the characters in the original story was male, the four actors here are female. Not surprisingly, Barry says this has brought a particular energy to the piece.
“When it's a war story and a conflict story, the language is very masculine,” he explains.
“And you can create a real a sense of dissonance, or a weirdness around that language when you hear it in women's voices. On the first day of rehearsals, when they started reading it aloud, I just thought ‘This feels right’.”
For Barry, one of the most enjoyable aspects of taking on the project has been rediscovering a story he first read from a book borrowed in Cork City Library in the 1990s. (Incidentally, that Grand Parade facility is just a few hundred yards from Sir Henrys, the venue where the future writer would have also had his first encounter with Corcadorca when he saw the nascent company’s version of Clockwork Orange in 1995). Back then, he admits he was more a fan of Seán Ó Faoláin, that other Cork writer who was “more languagey” than O’Connor.
But Guests Of The Nation has brought him back around to the talents of an author who died three years before Barry was born. “It’s still such a strong story,” he says, shaking his head in admiration. “There's really loads in there to play with. It asks if you're in a situation of really intense pressure and conflict, what are you capable of? There's great moments of very dark poetry in it.”
Barry’s research for the piece included a look at O’Connor’s biography of Michael Collins, and samples of letters British soldiers wrote home at the time. He also makes the point that, while the production almost coincides with the centenary of the events it describes, it feels unfortunately relevant again as tales of war clog the newsfeeds.
The last time Kevin Barry was involved in a play in Cork was when his Autumn Royal premiered at the Everyman in 2017, starring Siobhan McSweeney, soon to become a household name in Derry Girls. Since then, he’s won acclaim and awards for his third novel, Night Boat to Tangier, and his third collection of short stories, That Old Country Music, and he wrote the screenplay for a film based on earlier tales, Dark Lies The Island.
He’s already planning the eighth volume of the literary journal Winter Papers, which he publishes towards the end of each year with his wife Olivia Smith. This year’s edition will be particularly poignant as it will carry one of the final interviews done by Cathal Coughlan, the Cork music figure who passed away in May. Another play is in the pipeline, and a first draft of a new novel has been completed. Busy man, indeed.
Lockdown and its shearing of social commitments provided the perfect conditions for such a mass of output, but Barry has always enjoyed keeping it varied. “I'd get bored if I was just doing one kind of thing all the time,” he admits. “And it can actually help you improve all round. Writing for the screen tells you an awful lot about how to write short stories.”
And anyway, whenever he needs a break, he can just reach for that hurley.
- Guests Of The Nation, a collaboration between Kevin Barry, Pat Kiernan and Mel Mercier, takes place June 18-25. See corkmidsummer.com
- The Wakefires, Elizabeth Fort, June 15-25: Innovative Dublin company Anu will have less than 10 audience members for each performance of their tale of sexual violence in Ireland during the 1922-23 period
- Party Scene, Marina Market, June 16-17: Subtitled ‘Chemsex, Community and Crisis’, this piece of dance theatre looks at the highs and lows of life in a drug-fuelled subculture in Ireland.
- Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster, Everyman, June 17-18: It may be filed under ‘theatre’, but this performance from a group from Battersea Arts Collective is all about the beatboxing. Ideal for anyone with an interest in hip hop culture.
- A Safe Passage, Firkin Crane, June 17-21: Festival regular Irene Kelleher returns with a premiere of her tale set in a lighthouse in 1979.
- Ecclesiastes, Triskel Arts Centre, June 20-21: Cork composer John O’Brien has created this lockdown-era piece with actor Derbhle Crotty and the Carducci String Quartet.
- Whale, Cork Opera House, June 24-26: John McCarthy directs and stars in his own play, following four human lives across the lifespan of the world’s largest mammal.
