Solid as a rock: Former stonemason Mick Flannery hands-on in development of his musical stage show
Mick Flannery and Julie Kelleher at the Tinteán Theatre in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, during rehearsals for The House Must Win. Pictures: Chani Anderson
It is many years since Mick Flannery trained as a stonemason before pursuing music full-time but the willingness to graft has never left him. The Cork singer/songwriter has recently added a new skill to his repertoire, writing the script as well as the music for the upcoming stage show During recent rehearsals, however, he had to be persuaded not to get too hands-on in other areas.
“There’s a running joke where I have to tell him to put down the drill, because he is inclined to start building things,” says the show’s director Julie Kelleher.
The origins of described as a musical drama, is a saga in itself. It is a new iteration of the 2019 stage production , which in turn was based on Flannery’s acclaimed 2007 concept album of the same name. Ironically, although Flannery has said he is not a big fan of musical theatre, that album began life as a musical in 2005, as part of a project for the music and production course Flannery was doing at Coláiste Stiofán Naofa in Cork.
The narrative thread joining them all is the story of brothers Frank and Luther, and Grace, the woman who is caught between them as Luther’s gambling habit threatens to take them all down. Set in a small Irish town in the 1970s, Flannery describes as “much more of a musical” than with the addition of many new songs. The show will have its world premiere at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire before transferring to the Everyman in Cork.
Flannery is characteristically modest when discussing his foray into scriptwriting and how it differs from writing songs. “It has been humbling. I write a song and I finish it, I make a demo, I record it, and that's it, you like it or you don't. But with the whole process of scriptwriting, people have lots of genuine, functional and intelligent criticisms. You end up kind of wishing you'd never shown them some of the cheesy drafts that really expose how shit you are at this.”
Such self-deprecation belies Flannery’s gift for storytelling, as well as the impressive range of talent behind the production, including a cast which features Tommy Tiernan in his first musical theatre role, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo of the movie and Cork’s own John McCarthy, the remaining cast member from .
The show will also feature a band of six musicians — unlike when he added greatly to proceedings with his on-stage musical contribution, Flannery himself will not be among them. “I will be in the nearest bar,” he says. “I'll be there watching for a couple of nights obviously, but I don’t have a role.”
A big coup is the enlisting of Liam Robinson as music supervisor. An accomplished musician and multi-instrumentalist in his own right, he is also music director of the hugely successful Broadway and West End musical
“Liam has added a huge amount of style and colour musically to these songs that I would never have dreamt of,” says Flannery. Indeed, the arrangements impressed him so much he has made a double album of the show’s setlist that will be released next month.
It features a song with musician and creator Anaïs Mitchell, who has also been a big inspiration to Flannery. Their friendship came about when they met at a music conference in the US and she later came to one of Flannery’s gigs.
“We stayed in touch and I’d call her every now and again to pick her brain. I sent her one of my early drafts, and she was very encouraging. She said, ‘you're able to do this, and you’ll get there’ which was important for me to hear. It made me feel like it was possible at a time where I was really on the fence with doubt.”
Also taking on a new challenge with is director Julie Kelleher, who has a special connection to the project, having been a producer on and artistic director of the Everyman when it was staged there in 2019. A seasoned theatre director, this is her first musical, and an experience she is thoroughly enjoying navigating.
“It’s a form that has its own demands but it is all storytelling in the end," says Kelleher. "I also find Mick and his team are such ready theatre-makers, in an old-school, roll up your sleeves kind of way. There's that sense of meitheal that goes with theatre-making and Mick is really well-disposed towards that.”
She says working with Robinson has been particularly enlightening. “Mick’s songs have so much story, character and feeling in them and Liam has brought them into this really theatrical world that makes loads of offers and invitations in terms of staging. It has been a total joy to see that process developing.”
Kelleher believes Flannery is bringing something new to musical theatre in an Irish context, fusing our literary tradition with his poetic and intimate songwriting. “In his humble way, Mick is offering something to the canon of the musical. As a story or a stage play, the characters feel not too far away from something like John B Keane’s or Conor McPherson's We’re in that kind of world, except the difference is that we hear about what the characters are feeling. It's not left to subtext, we actually open the valve and let all the emotions pour out.”
For Flannery, the collaborative aspect of theatre-making has been a valuable counterpoint to the often solitary pursuit of songwriting, and he has been happy to work with the cast in shaping his vision.
“I’m very impressed at how in tune the actors are. I'm always grateful to them when they come to me with little improvements that can be made, to naturalise the lines that I've given them. It won’t be massively different, but it will have made it more human. I find myself watching a group of people that are living within this album that I wrote when I was a young boy.”
So now he has conquered his doubts and is preparing to show the results to the world, will there be any more additions to the CV? “I think I'll just go back to the building now,” he says. “Sometimes in the workshops and rehearsals, when there are things I have to solve or a new song that needs to be written, I pass by a building site, and there's a lad with a jackhammer, or a fella driving a dumper, and I think that's where I should be really, I'm over my head here.”
Joking aside, Flannery is grateful his own gamble to carve out a career in music rather than construction has paid off. “I have been extremely lucky because I have been getting away with doing this thing that I love for 20 years now. It's not a huge amount of people that come to my gigs, but it's enough to support my life, and sometimes I can even bring a band around. I don't know how lucky someone should be but I'm not sure if anyone should be much luckier than I am.”
- is at the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire from April 16-May 3; and The Everyman, Cork, May 6-16; thehousemustwin.com
