How strange it is to talk with the director of a theatre company who isn’t attacking the Arts Council. But that’s exactly the case with Niall Henry, who is a founder member of Sligo’s Blue Raincoat Theatre Company and the director of their latest production, The Strange Voyage Of Donald Crowhurst, which is now playing at the Peacock.

More about the play later, but why is Niall ready to “go against the grain” when it comes to the current climate of savaging Arts Council decisions to, for example, cut touring grants? For one thing Henry remembers when he started Blue Raincoat back in 1991 with Malcolm Hamilton (who penned their latest production) and was “more than happy” to receive a grant of £7,000. This year the theatre company received a grant of “over E200,000” and he claims they “can survive” on that. And do more than just survive, given the critical and public success of their latest play.
“We all should have more money in the arts, but at the same time, the amount of money in the arts world now is extraordinary, compared to what was there, say, ten years ago,” Niall proffers. “We were going for a few years, at the start, with no money before we got that £7,000 for our fourth year. And we were so delighted. Not just with the money, but because we knew that Druid had taken seven years to get a grant. All that has happened is that the funding has slowed down. The fact that it all slows down a bit in a time of general recession is only natural, isn’t it?”
So what about those theatre companies who can’t tour and claim they have little more than enough money to pay administrative costs?
“The reason for that is a policy decision the Arts Council made when Silé DeValera came in,” Niall responds. “On one hand they pulled the touring grants and, on the other hand, they reduced the money for a lot of theatre companies around the country – and this pushed a lot of regional venues into being more commercial, because they have to make money. And when that happens, theatre does become more commercial and so, bit by bit, the market space for anything slightly different is reduced. But, for whatever reasons, we’ve always survived in our own little ‘slightly different’ niche, no matter what happens. And that would be our ambition, to survive doing plays like The Strange Voyage Of Donald Crowhurst.”
So what is this play, that Irish Theatre Magazine said “will transport you to another world – a beautiful, disturbing world of murky light, lapping waves, madness and insanely graceful movement”, all about? It’s based on the true story of Donald Crowhurst, who set out from England in 1968 in the first single-handed, non-stop, round-the-world sailboat race. But en route Crowhurst disappeared, leaving behind two logbooks, “one with the fictional version of events that Crowhurst had offered the media” and the other “providing the true account.” In the play five actors play various aspects of Crowhurst and his wife, “all of which adds up to an exploration of truth and illusion, madness and sanity.” But what attracted Niall Henry and his theatre company to this story?
“Well, it’s the sea drama of the 20th century!” he responds. “And though I was only five or so when it happened, I remember reading a book about the whole thing later and it fascinated me. And it still does, because it is, ultimately, the story of a man going though his own form of psychosis. I don’t want to say what Crowhurst finally did to himself, or how the play ends, but what was attractive was those two diaries which give us a twin narrative – we follow the story of the wife, at home, and his story, at sea, and we tie the two together. And the core theme of the play is, ‘What is true and what is not true?’ which, surely, is something we can all relate to.”