It really is time the work of Dermot Bolger was reassessed in the context of his peerless contribution to Irish literature since leaving his job in a factory some 30 years ago.
Since then he has written seven novels, including The Journey Home and A Second Life, in addition to plays such as In High Germany and The Lament For Arthur Cleary. Bolger also ran the late, lamented Raven Arts Press, which published controversial books such as Paddy Doyle’s The God Squad. But director Ray Yates certainly feels “Dermot’s time is coming to be reassessed.” In the meantime, he is directing Bolger’s latest play, Walking The Road, and fully aware that this is Dermot bringing it all back home. The play is also a thank-you to one of his heroes, the poet Francis Ledwidge, who is the subject of the piece and who died 90 years ago.
“Dermot’s connection to Francis Ledwidge goes right back to his teenage years,” says Yates. “Because Dermot identifies with Ledwidge as a working class poet. And he knew that Ledwidge had on one occasion walked through the night from Rathfarnham to Slane – that’s in the play – after waking up with his first poem in his head when he was 16 years of age. So he just left his job as a grocer’s apprentice, walked out of the house in Rathfarnham and went home to Slane. And he stopped at a particular milestone in Finglas, where Dermot is from. Dermot himself sat on that milestone when he was 16 and dedicated his life to poetry. So, this is a thank-you and a play in remembrance of Francis Ledwidge.”
That said, Ray explains that, as with many of Dermot’s plays, this work is non-naturalistic and actually set in “that limbo before you figure out whether you are dead or alive”, as the ghost of Ledwidge heads home having been shot in Flanders Field in 1917, while serving with the British Army in World War One. In fact, the play was commissioned by the In Flanders Field Museum and its central premise is captured in the poem Home by Francis Ledwidge, specifically in the lines,
“This is a song a robin sang/This morning on a broken tree/It was about the little fields/That call across the world to me.”
“That poem does capture what the play is about, in essence,” says Ray. “It’s a man heading home who meets the ghosts of his past, the people he met and loved along the way, from his father and mother to girlfriends and dead soldiers, whatever. And it is a very unusual play in the sense that Ledwidge is dead and he’s walking home, but he can’t remember who he is. He thinks he might have shellshock, and there is this voice, or person, walking with him, who is playing all the different voices in his life.
“And throughout the play, he has to confront the fact that he is dead. Francis, in this piece, is played by Colin O’Donoghue, and the actor who plays all the other parts is Kelly Hickey. But we sneak previewed the play in Milwaukee recently and people really were knocked out by Kelly, who comes from Ballymun. And what you have to remember about Ballymun is that it is as big as Sligo, and there is bound to be as many talented people here as in a city that size. Kelly happens to be one of them. She’s only 20 and she’s an extraordinary actor.”
In fact, Walking The Road was commissioned by the ‘South Dublin County Council In Context 3’ in association with the In Flanders Field Museum, and is getting its Irish premiere at the Axis Arts Centre, Ballymun before moving to the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, and then the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. But Ray ends by reflecting, again, on the works and talent of Dermot Bolger.
“I actually adjudicated at the 2007 Acting Irish Theatre Festival in Milwaukee,” he says. “I did it 10 years ago, and it was amazing because a lot of Dermot’s work has been on there, including a play I directed, From These Green Heights. But I really do think now is the time Dermot will be reassessed, because he has such an enormous body of work. He is one of our great writers.”