Navan Man takes leap of faith

IT seems that Navan Man is getting further and further away from his spiritual home in Co Meath and it might be no surprise if he wound up clutching an Oscar in a few years time.

Stuart Carolan, the creator and voice of Navan Man, an enormously popular sketch on Eamonn Dunphy's old radio show, The Last Word, has just picked up the 37th George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

His first Play, Defender Of The Faith which was premiered on the Peacock stage by the Abbey in March 2004, was a surprising departure from Navan Man a dark thriller about a Republican family set in 1980s Northern Ireland five years after the hunger strikes.

The prestigious award, which has been won by Mike Leigh and Hanif Kureishi and Irish playwrights Billy Roche, Conor McPherson, Martin

McDonagh and Enda Walsh, has long been regarded as a stepping stone to success and not just in the world of theatre.

Irish production impresario Noel Pearson the man behind My Left Foot who put on the original stage production is now acting as producer of a film version, to be directed by Pat O'Connor (Sweet November, Dancing at Lughnasa, Inventing the Abbotts, Circle of Friends) and starring Michael Gambon.

"It's great to win," said Mr Carolan yesterday, "and a nice bit of prize money, ten thousand sterling [which he will share with fellow prize winner, Laura Wade]."

Along with working on the film screenplay for Defender Of The Faith, Mr Carolan has just completed a novel.

"It will be coming out on New Island next year. I finished it a few months ago and it is a tragic love story set in contemporary Dublin. I was doing a lot of sketches for five years and I really enjoyed them," said Carolan, "but I had other things I wanted to do."

When asked if this was the death knell for Navan Man, Carolan chuckled and said, "who knows I'll keep an open mind."