Mother of acting roles: Imelda May on telling the story of an influential, witty Irish woman
Imelda May in Mother of all the Behans adapted and directed by Peter Sheridan at The 3Olympia Theatre from August 15
If you see Imelda May chatting to herself this summer, pay her no heed.
"I'll look like I'm talking to myself," May admits — but she is preparing herself to play one of the Irish women she most admires.
The singer is currently getting ready to take to the stage in a very different guise to play Kathleen Behan, mother of Brendan, Brian, and Dominic, and a powerhouse in her own right.
“I'm walking around the streets chatting — I'm just going through lines and lines and lines. Violet, my daughter, filmed me the other day on the plane and I didn't know and she said: ‘This is what you look like. You're making a show of me’,” May laughs.
— based on the book about his mother by Brian Behan — will see May play a woman who made a name for herself during a chaotic time in Irish history.
Peter Sheridan will direct the production, covering Behan’s life from her birth in 1889 to her death almost 95 years later, a century which saw a remarkable period of political and social change in Irish life.
“Kathleen is Brendan Behan's mother — but she's more than that. She's a really strong character, a wonderful, intelligent, witty, and rebellious woman. I can't even tell you how much I want people to come to this play — I'm really passionate about people hearing her story.”
May says the show gives audiences an opportunity to hear "her story" as it features the words and thoughts of Behan herself: “What Peter has done is actually very beautiful because he's used Kathleen's own words."
It’s not an imaginary conversation. Kathleen's son Brian recorded her at the end of her life: “He wrote a book on the recordings of her and then Peter beautifully turned it into this eloquent and well-rounded, beautifully moving play. The words are Kathleen’s words."
May says this is "a history that will be forgotten if we don't tell it".
“We know so much about the men of our history, and so little about the women really. It's not that the women weren't doing anything. They were doing absolutely everything — they were freedom fighting and writing and changing the world and raising the kids and fixing the whole social structure. They were left to pick up the pieces from whatever the men were doing as well, and trying to raise whole families within whatever was happening politically.”
Born Kathleen Kearney, Behan was from a prosperous farming family, but her and her siblings’ lives changed dramatically following the death of their father. They were placed in an orphanage; and she also faced hardship years later.
“She was a survivor, for sure,” says May. “Her first husband was killed after the First World War, and she was left with a toddler, expecting the next baby and nowhere to live. She had to be made of steel to be able to deal with that, to be able to survive."
“She knew Michael Collins and Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz. So she was right at the hub of all of this (time period), and influenced her children to be socialists, and anarchists. She was the driving force behind the whole family.”
Behan was a woman who would sing at the drop of a hat, says May, meaning that some of her performance will be in song. “I'm singing within this play as well, but not as me, as Kathleen,” she explains.
“I'm listening to recordings," she says. "I don't want to do an impersonation of her. But I do want to capture her spirit in the songs, so I'm not singing them as me at all."
In preparing for the role, May turned to the advice of her boyfriend, actor and singer Niall McNamee, as well as some of her well-known friends.
“I’ve got good people around me, Niall of course and his advice. Gabriel Byrne. Jeff Goldblum, I was asking his advice. They're good friends of mine and I was trying to pick their brain on what way they'd approach it."
Was there any common denominator in the advice given by the actors in her life?
“They're all telling me I can do it, which is nice."
While her singing career has made her an international star, May grew up steeped in the culture of theatre and drama, so it’s no great surprise that she would want to explore this world. Among a few recent acting roles was the English drama We’ll also see her in the forthcoming movie , starring Pierce Brosnan, which recently completed filming in County Donegal.
Is acting something she’d always wanted to pursue or is that just how life is rolling for her now?
“A bit of both. I remember years ago I was in a production of that did a small tour around schools and I really enjoyed it. It was a long time ago, but it's just a small blip of a thing that I did that I really loved.”
The desire to perform was fostered at a young age by members of her own family and friends, who were instrumental in bringing storytelling to their own community.
“I was in the Liberties Music and Drama group that my mam started up. My mam was passionate about the arts and plays. She and her friend, Joyce, started up the group which is still going now.
“We used to sing and dance all over the place, and they taught me well. My auntie Kathleen was in amateur dramatics, always bought us tickets to The Abbey, made sure that we got to see some great plays that were there. My father would read wonderful poetry to us going to sleep at night — Pat Ingoldsby and WB Yeats."
Now deep into rehearsals for the show, May is focused on telling Behan’s story.
“I feel Kathleen in me and I feel like I'm supposed to tell her story. It feels right, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience so far. I'm terrified, of course — more so about remembering the whole play, not playing Kathleen. I really feel her in me. I hope I do Peter proud, I hope I do my family proud and most of all, I hope I do Kathleen proud.”
- Mother of all the Behans runs from August 15 at the 3Olympia Theatre.
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