Culture That Made Me: Cork lord mayor Kieran McCarthy on John Denver and musical theatre
Lord Mayor of Cork, Kieran McCarthy.
Born in 1977, Kieran McCarthy grew up in Ballinlough, Cork city. He studied at University College Cork, completing a PhD in Geography on the River Lee Valley. He has written 30 books about Cork, its hinterland and Irish history. In 2009, he was elected to Cork City Council. In 2023, he became Lord Mayor of Cork. He’s also a founder of the Cork City Musical Society. He will host the Lord Mayor’s Tea Dance, City Hall, Cork, 3pm, Sunday, Jan 28. Tickets €10 from ProMusica or tickets.peoplesrepublicofcork.com
Growing up, Anything Goes with Aonghus McAnally, Zig and Zag, and Pajo’s Junkbox were highly influential TV programmes, not just for me, but for every young Irish child in the 1980s — we were brought along by this comedy and storytelling and the happiness and creativity of it. On Anything Goes, Marty FitzGerald’s “Make and Do” was helping us to make models and be creative and be happy while we were doing it. Just go for it.
I remember loving The A-Team. The fact they had four characters who were completely different from each other. You had Hannibal, the lead guy; Face; B.A. Baracus; and Murdoch. They all carried different traits so there was one you were bound to like. Every week, they were trying to crack a puzzle. It was simple and straightforward. I remember enjoying the music, and collecting the little dinky replica toys that came with the show, like The A-Team van or dolls of Hannibal and B.A.
I remember being in a production of West Side Story around 2010 in the Cork Opera House. Bryan Flynn was the director. I played Sergeant Krupke, the cop. I got to be in some of the scenes where the younger actors are at play. I remember being in the gym scene where Tony and Maria meet for the first time. There's a massive dance-off between the two groups, The Jets and The Sharks. I was on the stage, supposedly keeping the groups apart. I was so enamoured by the energy of the performers. It was so powerful. I remember thinking, I'm so lucky to be on this stage, while also being an actor trying to pull them apart.
One of the musicals I’ve directed is Sweet Charity. It has that beautiful piece The Rhythm of Life in it. It's about this person who is somewhat lost and she wants to find someone but very much by the end of the musical figures out she has got to be brave to continue her life. She sings the song about how courageous she is just continuing on in life, and that she is a unique individual. It’s interesting, a good old yarn.
A go-to artist for me to calm down my head is John Denver. The reason being is I had a teacher in primary school who played John Denver. It was mid- to late-1980s. He was at the peak of his powers. The teacher used to turn on John Denver in the classroom, probably to calm us all down. I remember 'Calypso' very clearly going on in the classroom. Listening to it, it was like an earworm. It gets right in. Actually one of my performance songs I sing is John Denver's 'Perhaps Love'.
I really like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Their tunes are so catchy. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ is great. Some of my performance pieces are tunes like Some Enchanted Evening or You'll Never Walk Alone. Oklahoma! is 80 years old. I remember seeing it twice in production. It's very tune-filled. A very simple story that brings you along to the very end.
I was an avid reader as a child. I was a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators. I loved the curiosity and intrigue. The stories were well written. I liked the idea they were in a hideaway place, a house trailer hidden in a scrapyard, somewhere in California. There were about 40 of these books. I remember there was one book I couldn't get, The Mystery of the Purple Pirate. They stopped publishing it or it wasn't in the library. A good friend of mine at the time and I were always looking for it. One day, he managed to get it second-hand before I did at The Shelf bookshop on George's Quay. It was the first time either of us had ever seen it.
I remember being lucky enough to see the Star Wars films in the cinema. It was such an experience. The storytelling was so good. It was good guy, bad guy. It took you off to another world — the imagination, the fantasy, the creativity of it. Like a lot of kids at the time, I lived in this world where it was all about creating your own adventures, a time you could disappear for hours, walking on the road, or playing soccer or tennis with friends nearby. Popular culture, with movies like Star Wars, drove you to have your own adventures. I remember converting my back garden into my own adventure space.
I loved the adventure of the Indiana Jones movies. They were fantastic. They linked back into the books I liked — about this person on an adventure, which revolved around history and archaeology, stuff I really enjoyed looking at. This guy who's got a massive sense of comedy and is up against the odds, and he wins out at the end. I was too young to see the first Indiana Jones movie at the cinema but I have a clear memory of seeing Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade because the multi-screen Capitol cineplex had just opened. It was plush. This was around 1989. I remember everyone queuing around the block. It's interesting — afterwards, I did archaeology in college for my B.A.
I’ve done drama training in the past, loads of musical theatre training. I suppose it helps as a councillor, given all of the drama around the council chamber. I remember being in a memorable production one time of Beauty and the Beast in the Everyman Palace under the direction of Catherine Mahon-Buckley, a really talented person. I played Gastón with a blond wig, completely out there as a character. He’s an evil character, but sometimes the evil, mischievous characters are the best characters to play!
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s material has always engaged me. The storytelling is fantastic. Everything from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to The Phantom of the Opera. They have nice songs. They link to humanity and to hope.
