'My mother sold every ticket in the place': Aidan Dooley on the success of his Tom Crean play
Aidan Dooley's Tom Crean play has toured to every corner of the world, including North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, even Malta, although that production didn’t please everyone.
Aidan Dooley’s which has been running since 2000 and is returning to Cork’s Everyman for the 13th time, is arguably one of the best Irish theatre productions of the century.
Its journey into the world has involved some fascinating twists and turns, some serendipitous. The play about the Kerry explorer originated as a 10-minute educational piece Dooley performed to people standing in the atrium at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.
Dooley expanded it, and, early on, got a booking in his hometown, Galway, at the Taibhdhearc, Ireland’s national Irish language theatre. He took a punt, dropping in there at Christmas and booked a couple of nights in March.
“My mother, bless her, sold every ticket in the place,” he says. “If she'd been my theatrical agent, I'd be a star by now. She was sending my nephew out on his bicycle to bring tickets to uncles and 42nd cousins up in Bohermore. She was saying, ‘They have to come and see my Aidan in the play in the Taibhdhearc.’ She was magnificent.
“My wife [who Dooley met in acting school] and I at that stage were doing a lot of museum work, which was the genesis of the Tom Crean show. It was like casual labour jobs — you’d get gigs. Life was tough.
"I was determined to stay with the chosen profession, but the consequences were lean times. When I got the Taibhdhearc cheque for the two nights, it was the equivalent of a month's wages in the museum work. I remember thinking, ‘oh my goodness, maybe I could do more of these’.”
Dooley started phoning around theatres. He got a slot at the New Theatre in Dublin in September 2003, just before the Dublin Theatre Festival so theatre critics were at a loose end. Several saw the show and wrote up positive reviews.
“They were glowing. I couldn't have written the reviews myself,” he says.
Then the brilliant theatre impresario Pat Moylan — the theatre producer behind international hits such as — got behind it, putting it into Andrew’s Lane Theatre for a five-week run. Ticket sales were good but not selling out.
Then, another piece of good fortune.
“Pat Moylan’s publicity person got me on to an RTÉ afternoon radio show, hosted by Derek Mooney, the guy who does a lot on nature and birds. He asked me to perform a little section of the show.
"Well, the proverbial phone exchange lit up. It was a Friday afternoon. When I went back in to start the run of the play on Tuesday, every seat in Andrews Lane was sold.”
Then it started to snowball. A sell-out run at the 1,200-seater Olympia followed, and it went global, winning, for example, a prestigious Fringe First Award at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe.
It has toured to every corner of the world, including North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, even Malta, although that production didn’t please everyone.
“I was invited over to Malta by the British Council,” he says. “I don't think they quite realized how Irish the show was. Even though I'm talking about their heroes [including Captain Robert Falcon Scott], it’s a very Irish piece.
"The head man in Malta, when he came to see it, he said to his underling, the woman who booked me, ‘Why did we book this?’”
One of the remarkable features of is that it’s unscripted. Dooley had it transcribed once because the would only review it if there was a “script”. The play evolves constantly.
“I’m like a seanchaí,” he says. People often ask him if they can do his play, to which he responds, “There is no play.” It’s befitting for a play celebrating a Kerryman, Tom Crean, who had to survive on melting ice and helter-skelter circumstances.
“There's two ways of looking at Tom,” says Dooley of the unassuming hero from Annascaul, near Dingle.
“Either, he knowingly had an awareness that he would not think negatively, only focusing entirely on how to succeed in a situation. Or he naturally was that way. I met Tom’s two daughters in the early days, and they said, ‘Our father was a very gentle, happy, smiley man.’
“My instinct is that he was naturally psychologically positive. Of all the pictures of the various expeditions, even the day they set off, all the other men are quite glum and stoic. The only man smiling in them is Tom Crean.”
- Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer is on a nationwide tour, including Cork’s Everyman (Thursday, February 26 to Sunday, March 1).
- See: www.tomcreanshow.com
