How part of me ended up on stage

Playwright Stella Feehily told BRIAN O'CONNELLthat one of her characters might bear some resemblance to him, so he looked forward to seeing 'himself' on stage – until a few minutes into the first scene, that is

SEVERAL YEARS ago the Irish writer Stella Feehily contacted me about a play she was writing based on overseas aid workers. I had just returned from my first trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, reporting for The Irish Timeson gender violence against women in North Kivu province. I described to Feehily some of the scenes I had witnessed, forwarded her articles I had written and filled her in a little about contacts I had with aid workers on the ground, as well as providing a few other geopolitical and personal insights. I also put her in touch with some other journalists I knew who had been in the country.

She said she might incorporate some of what I had told her into a play that she was hoping would get a run at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and asked whether I’d be okay with that. “Sure,” I said, and we continued to email back and forth over several months.

Some time later Feehily asked me to come to London to meet her director, husband Max Stafford-Clark, and an actor. For an hour or two, in a rehearsal space owned by Out of Joint theatre company, they asked me questions and the actor observed my replies closely. I went into some detail as I talked about my own past and my impressions of some of the aid workers I had met. I then pretty much forgot about the whole thing, until one day some months ago when Feehily emailed again.

She said she had a date for her play, now called Bang Bang Bang, and was going to forward me a script. She added that I should let her know if there was anything in it I wasn't comfortable with. She explained that I would notice certain similarities with one of the characters, in terms of my background and what I had told her, but that it wasn't me per se. The play was to open in Bolton and later do a four-week run at the Royal Court before continuing to tour the UK.

As I'm not a great reader of play scripts, I gave Feehily's a light reading. I did notice that one character, a journalist called Ronan, seemed to curse a lot, and was based in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, reporting for The Irish Timeson gender violence. I emailed Feehily back to say I trusted her and looked forward to seeing the play.

And so, on a Saturday evening 10 days ago, my wife and I took our seats upstairs at the Royal Court, near the start of a sold-out run of Bang Bang Bang,and waited eagerly to see both the play and a version of myself on stage. It was a weird moment.

While the character doesn’t appear until act two, he is referred to in the play’s first scene by the main character, Sadhbh (strongly played by Orla Fitzgerald), when she says: “I’ve never been with Ronan Fitzgerald. He’s f***ed everything from here to Bujumbura.”

Having got married just a few weeks before, this led to much distancing on my part from this Ronan character during the interval.

“These writers,” I said to Mrs O’Connell, “they can have such vivid imaginations.”

Feehily admits that her tendency to use people she has met in real life as a spark for her characters can cause problems. She has even been threatened with legal action when characters proved a little too close to the bone of those she has modelled them on.

“With anybody, you always start with a real person and then it becomes somebody else,” she says. “The character starts behaving in other ways, but the initial person informs it. In your case, our interview and meetings we had were instrumental in helping me create a character. I read your book and remembered some of the stories you told us.”

But Feehily is quick to point out that the characters can often be a mix of three or four people, so that each person may recognise only about a quarter of the character on stage as being similar. She is careful to add to the characters during the writing process, and change them just enough so that they are not too close to the people they were initially modelled on.

IN MY CASE, when Ronan eventually appears on stage, he is in his mid-40s, bald and a lot more hard-edged than I think I am. Having said that, he does write for The Irish Times, has something of a drink problem and has a child from a previous relationship, all of which resonated with me.

Also, I recognised observations I had made in some of his dialogue. In particular, there were comments on the dancer Jean Butler being brought to Rwanda by an Irish aid agency, on the availability of good steak in Kigali and on the discrepancy between the large number of aid workers based in Rwanda and the smaller number based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a few hours away. All of these were points I had made, and my wife smiled when the Jean Butler lines were spoken (she’s heard that riff more than once). There was enough in the character to know that it wasn’t me and that it was me. It was a pretty strange experience.

Afterwards in the bar came the most surreal part: meeting the actor Paul Hickey, who played 25 per cent of me. On stage, Hickey did a great job, playing two roles. Originally from Dublin, he has been based in London for about 12 years, playing at the National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse, and enjoying success in film and television.

Hickey worked with Feehily on the play for several years and immersed himself in the role, reading as much secondary material as he could get his hands on, including books by Tim Butcher, Fergal Keane and my own. So how does an actor respond to part of a character’s real-life inspiration being in the audience?

“I think it would have been different if we’d met beforehand,” says Hickey. “As I hadn’t met you, I might have been more on my toes if we had. If I now notice a particular mannerism or way of speaking or some personal detail of yours, then that would be interesting and maybe I’d think about adding it to the character. We’re at the stage now, though, where we’ve been doing the show on tour for a few months, so the way we are playing it is well defined. It probably won’t change much between now and the end of the run.”

I mention that I found viewing parts of his performance unsettling, while some of it, especially hearing my thoughts on Jean Butler, was quite amusing. But as for the wilful philandering and the bad cuss words, I had to draw the bloody line. That, I pointed out, is not me.

“Don’t worry,” Hickey said, attempting to reassure me (and my wife). “Ronan didn’t feel a huge stretch for me. He is probably a lot of Irish men put together.”

Phew.

Bang Bang Bangruns at the Royal Court Theatre in London until November 5th, before touring