A PROD IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Michael West could have every reason to be blown away by the response to his play Foley. To say it was well-received during last year's Dublin Theatre Festival is stating the case so mildly its a sick joke.

"It is one of the best and most original pieces of dramatic writing to emerge in several years," said one critic. Another said "simply superb" and yet another the more predictable "not to be missed." Foley also went on to win the Best Production in 2000 award from The Sunday Tribune and Best Actor award for Andrew Bennett, who performs the one man show. So is author Michael West blown away by all this? How does this affect his current work?

"I'm not really that affected by it all because the main thing about my current work is that we're expecting a baby any day now. In fact it's four days overdue!" he says, referring to his wife, Annie Ryan, who directs Foley. Given the urgency of the situation I promise to rush this phone interview. So, Michael, in short snappy sentences, tell us what attracted you to the theme of this play, which focuses on one man's attempt to deal with his Irish Protestant ancestry.

"I should have a short snappy answer ready, but I don't!" he says. "I'd been interested in complicated situations and doing adaptations of foreign works and thought it would be nice to try something more direct. Also there is a money element. We could afford to pay one actor! Because we'd just done a twelve hander and that really was stretching our resources. So there was that luxury of just exploring one character. Then the more work I did on it, the more it seemed familiar."

But was this subject familiar in a familial sense?

"It's based on my background and stories I've heard and rural 'Prods', but it'd be more my parents' life than mine."

So what was the response to this exploration of the Protestant psyche? Did anyone object?

"It's peculiar. This is not a very nice character but no-one seems to take it personally. It's a balance between a savage indictment of a certain kind of aloofness you get with Southern 'Prods' and a love poem to that way of life. It flips between the two. But whereas when I started writing it I thought it was going to explore the question of Protestant identity, it ended up more as the tale of a man who loses everything. His wife, his family, in an attempt to find a sense of freedom or identity."

But why does this character lose so much?

"He becomes obsessed with the idea that he didn't pick his birthright, he was just given this identity. He was never asked, never engaged with it, so he rejects it, marries a Catholic, converts, tries to put as much distance between himself and where he came from. Then he has this horrible realisation that this, basically, is a very Protestant way of dealing with things. So the question remains, to what extent do you ever get away from where you came from?"

Foley clearly is carried, to whatever degree, by the acclaimed performance of Andrew Bennett who, in effect, plays six characters. So how did Bennett get it so right?

"He's a good friend of ours and Annie and I have worked with him four or five times" Michael responds."But he's also a marvellous actor. And why I think Foley works so well is that what the three of us were trying to do, independently, met in this project. It's Andrew's first time doing a one man show and I think he was ready for the challenge. Annie thinks the reason Andrew is so good at it is because he had to travel so far to get it. He's not a 60-year-old craggy "Prod" so he had to engage with the play at that level. And does. And he's a total pleasure to work with. Given that he is very busy we were very lucky to get him. So, all in all, Foley, is one of those magical projects where everything just seems to gel so perfectly."

But returning to the subject of his soon-to-be-born child, Michael West jokes that "the best thing about it being a successful one man show is that Andrew is going out to tour the production for the next two months and it's already made us enough money to just relax after the baby is born. Even stay in bed for the two months!"

Foley is being staged at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght from Feb. 5th-10th at 8pm