Admiration in Omagh

Recently I had cause to travel to Omagh on consecutive nights. My daughter Aislinn was on stage at the Omagh arts centre in the Lyric theatre’s production of Brian Friel’s play  “the Home Place.” 

My little one was, of course, brilliant in the part of little Maisie McLaughlin.

It was-at the tender age of 12-her first professional role.  Despite working alongside luminaries like Ian McIlhinney and Aislin McGuckin my princess wasn’t out of place.

There are no thespians in either familial line. The kid, however, seems “to have it”. 

As every parent has to, by dint of having issue, part of the parental contract is that you have to sit thru your kids play and clap wildly at the end.

Most children shouldn’t be near any of the performing arts and schoolteachers aren’t cut out to put on theatre productions or concerts.

Sitting in the wings over those two nights I was able to look at the work fine actors speaking the words of a master dramatist.

After my Aislinn’s final performance I chatted briefly with Stuart Graham who played Con Doherty the local Fenian leader.

Anyone who has seen the film “Hunger” will have seen Stuart play the role of the prison officer who, on a daily basis, batters Blanketmen for a paycheque.

I told him that I had watched the film in the Irish Film Centre in the company of people who much better than me knew what it was to be a resident of the H-Blocks. They were of the opinion that Mr. Graham got the character perfect.

I passed that on.

It is fair to say that he left the interaction mildly delighted.

Unlike the stage there is no immediate feedback for a film actor. Moreover the film performer has no idea what will be changed in the editing suite.

An enthusiastic audience cheered the cast of “the Home Place” to the rafters.

A film actor has no such immediate feedback after “cut”.

 

Many of Con Doherty’s fraternity ended up in English dungeons. Like Bobby Sands they refused to accept their criminality.

Neither the Fenians in the 19^th century nor the Blanketmen of Long Kesh accepted that they were behaving in a criminal fashion.

I suspect that the verdict of history will be more important than the verdict of a judge without a jury.

The play had toured the four corners of the island and had ended the production in Brian Friel’s home place-Omagh.

The play is set in a big house of the British Raj in Ireland when Britain was actually was “Great”.

The play deals with the concept of home-the dual identity of the Anglo Irish.

Where is, for the lordly Gore family, is home?

They have been in the big house for 400 years, but have never married out into the “mere Irish”.

Set in the time of the Land War Friel also deals with the scientific racism of the Victorians towards the conquered people of the empire.

An excellent review of first production of the play in 2005 can be found here.

 

http://www.culturevulture.net/Theater/HomePlace.htm

 

On the first night we were unsure of how to get to the arts centre in Omagh and having negotiated the one way system several times we spotted a small sign pointing a walk thru to the centre.

I pulled into the side and parked. As I got out I looked up the street to the imposing building that makes the T-junction. It was then I realised that I had seen this vista before.

I had to be very close to where the Omagh car bomb had been left ticking more than ten years ago.

As we made out way to the centre I pulled my little one into my side-it was an instinctive act of protection.

“Who in their right mind” I thought “ would leave a car bomb here?”

The answer is, of course, no one.

One the way back on the Strabane road, just at the Newtown Stewart slip road two friendly PSNI officers were waving people through a roadblock.

The following night-at exactly the same spot-at around the same time they were there again.

I wondered if the battle hardened RUC would have committed such an error?

One both nights, despite being waved on, I stopped briefly and wished them well.

I fear they may need it.

The funeral of Stephen Paul Carroll, the police officer killed in Craigavon had yet to take place, as I drove back to Letterkenny thru the darkness.

Expelling Britain from this last corner of Ireland wasn’t worth his death.

It is certainly worth no more.

Let him be the last.

Britain is, of course, no longer “Great” no longer a world power. Even in the deluded worlds of the Daily Mail reading golf club chap in Surrey is Britain a major player on the world stage.

The historical period of “the Home Place” saw British troops take part in the first Afghan war.

They didn’t win that one either.

However Britain was then the world’s biggest economy and the planet’s only superpower.

Times change.

History takes a long time the colonial system that put the Gore family in the big house is now gone and gone forever. The backwash of Britain’s empire is still, of course, felt in the North.  Empires are messy things. They are constructed in a haphazard, violent fashion and they are de-constructed in much the same way.

The current situation in the North between native and settler is a messy squabble, but it is better than what has went before.

The concept of “home” and a sense of belonging is still a focus for conflict on this island. The work of the men and women of 1916 remains unfinished.

However, those two nights in Omagh allowed me time to consider that the final push to achieve Connolly’s Republic has no further need of a man like Con Doherty.