'My mother sold every ticket in the place': Aidan Dooley on the success of his Tom Crean play 

Aidan Dooley has been performing Tom Crean - Arctic Explorer for 26 years. He explains how it snowballed into a theatre phenomenon 

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 Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, 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.