Breffni Holohan told David Hennessy about playing Queen Victoria and a widow in The Flea, a play about a true life scandal in Victorian London.
The Flea, currently showing at The Yard Theatre in East London, centres around the 1889 Cleveland Street Affair, a scandal that shook Victorian London.
Written by James Fritz and directed by Jay Miller, the play stars Cabinteely actress Breffni Holohan as Emily Swinscow and Queen Victoria.
The Flea delves into themes of class divides, corruption, and cover-ups as it tells a story of a gay brothel and house of assignation being discovered by police in Victorian London at a time when homosexuality was illegal. The repercussions went all the way to Buckingham Palace as it was rumoured that even Prince Albert Victor had frequented.
In 1889 Charlie Swinscow, a telegraph boy, is found with 14 shillings and arrested for theft. But Charlie didn’t steal the money, he earned it but if he reveals how, it will bring the whole house of cards down.
The Flea is returning to The Yard after its original run in 2023.
Breffni Holahan’s theatre credits include Electric Rosary (Royal Exchange), Collapsible (The Bush Theatre and The Abbey Theatre, Dublin), for which she was awarded The Stage Edinburgh Award for Acting Excellence, Drama at Inish (The Abbey Theatre, Dublin), It Was Easy in the End (The Abbey Theatre), and Dog Shit (Theatre503).
Her screen credits include About Joan, The Racer, The Nevers, Vikings (MGM/History Channel), Everything Not Saved and Balor Hall.
What was it that first attracted you to The Flea?
“The script itself.
“I would love to see another production of this because the script is so perfect as a document of art itself.
“I was just totally sunken in, totally invested in the characters, totally invested in every arc, every tiny thread throughout.
“It’s so well crafted and then the production is pulling at strands from the script that I could not see in there.
“It is fun, it’s punky, it’s underground.
“It’s about the smallest and the biggest effect on the smallest and biggest people, the ripple effects of one decision, one tiny thing: A flea bite, a flea jumping on the back of a rat.
“It’s just a dream because I get to play both the most realistic, close to home mother- She’s a recent widow, her son is imprisoned for gross indecency, a mother going through all of this- And then at the drop of a hat I get to play Queen Victoria in an Irish woman’s interpretation, shall we say.”
Have you been looking into the real life scandal that the play is based on?
“We had the opportunity to deep dive so we’ve done our research into the time.
“Jay Miller really encouraged us to do that not in any kind of ’here’s your homework’ way but for ourselves and knowing what 14 shillings means to a family.
“All of this story is taking place at the same time as the Jack the Ripper case has just gone cold so it’s a Victorian London reeling from danger.
“The place is such a dangerous place to be for women and for young gay men who are being hunted by law enforcement to make examples of them, obviously Oscar Wilde (who was incarcerated) being a huge example of that and an Irish sex worker called Jack Saul on which one of our characters is based.
“These young boys were being hounded by press and police to try and catch them in lewd, grossly indecent acts with higher ups.”
You said 14 shillings there and the whole scandal came to light from your stage son Charlie Swinscow having 14 shillings which is the kind of money no Victorian telegraph boy should have had..
“Yeah, the play is presented via my character Emily.
“I’m kind of showing the audience, walking them through and essentially asking them for forgiveness for something that I haven’t told them I’ve done until the end of the show.
“I’m presenting my imaginings of how things went down.
“So we do see a version of Emily’s imagining of those 14 shillings being found in a postal worker’s locker in the post office and how that just snowballs into, ‘Okay, who’s involved? Who’s involved? Who’s involved? Let’s go all the way to the top’.”
You mention your character Emily there. Is it a responsibility to portray her as she was a real person who lived through the whole thing?
“There’s so little to be read about the ordinary every man.
“I think this play’s a great representation of the ordinary everyman.
“It’s a bit of an honour.
“It’s been a privilege to represent women at that time in this story about, essentially, queer men.
“But I also get to play the woman at the heart of it, who’s telling the story, who’s affected by it but not talked about, who is then completely mirrored in the Queen who has the most representation.
“There’s a particular part in the play where a detective who worked on the Ripper case is discussing the women that he interviewed during that time and who had threatening encounters.
“He references that the women were ranting and raving. They weren’t dependable, they weren’t reliable.
“And that, to me, is a really important part of the play.
“There’s lots to do with just being a woman at that time and being unbelievable: You are incredible in the true sense of those words.
“I think that’s a real honour.”
You have mentioned your other role and that is of Queen Victoria. Is she somewhat secondary to the story as it seems to me that it’s Emily’s life is affected more..
“Nobody is less involved than the next.
“Charlie, who’s at the bottom of the pecking order, is a postal worker.
“His father has just died, his mother’s in penury and he just makes a decision.
“He just goes, ‘This is easy money. Here I go’.
“And he gets involved in sex work.
“He’s just as involved as Queen Victoria who toys with the idea of, ‘Okay, what if I imprisoned my grandson for his potential involvement in this? What if I didn’t? Okay, it seems a little bit easier for me if I don’t’.
“But everyone has the same stake.
“When I’m playing Emily, I’m really excited to play Victoria.
“I’m always bubbling with excitement to get a little bit ridiculous.
“Then I’m playing Victoria and I can’t wait to get back into Emily and get back to the ground and get back to the truth and the heart.
“This isn’t an entirely archaic story.
“Corruption, cover up, subterfuge: All of these things are rife in not only the monarchy but in politics and internationally.
“It’s not just England 100 and something years ago.
“We needn’t name names but there are very recent examples of cover ups within the monarchy, within politics, at home in Ireland, abroad.
“It’s really, really present when we’re telling the story.”
It is a true story about class as much as anything, isn’t it? It’s about aristocrats corrupting the lower class youths probably thinking it won’t come back on them but the stuff hits the fan..
“That’s totally it.
“Our show sows that seed all the way through.
“I open the show and I list everything that happens in the show.
“I say, ‘Before it all was the flea..’
“I get to say at the start, ‘There are Lords involved, there are princes and queens and gods and this is bigger than this room but let’s hold on for a second. Let’s go all the way back. Let’s go all the way down and all the way back…’
“So we do get to those moments of explosion and, as you say, sh*t hits the fan.
“We definitely get to that. That’s coming but let’s start to care about the people involved in that on all plains really.”
You would like to think that now we are a lot more progressive in our attitudes and we probably are but perhaps not as much as we would like to think..
“Absolutely, I suppose my mind goes to the representation of LGBTQ+ stories in the media and culture.
“Yes, I think that we’ve come a long way but there’s just such a long way to go.
“I volunteer for an organization called Switchboard which is a referral and listening helpline for the LGBTQ+ community.
“That’s a real direct line into what’s affecting our community now and it’s not all that different.
“People are still scared to come out for fear of repercussions.
“People are still scared to express who they are.
“It’s absolutely still in there.
“I remember the writer saying, ‘Yes, it’s a lark. It’s a really good night out at the theatre but it’s really quite scary and real and upsetting’ because of the threat of violence and the threat of imprisonment, which is also a violent place then and still now, very scary place to be’.
“There’s a moment where the actor who plays my son says, ‘Mum, I thought you knew. I thought you knew this is how I was getting the extra money that we were using’.
“And he tells the story of his first shift in this brothel.
“The amount of shame that is just punched into these people.
“My character talks to her son’s boyfriend at one point and says, ‘I know what it’s like when you’re that age and you like someone’.
“And then suddenly, ‘Oh God, we can’t be talking about this on the street’,
“You can’t be talking to your son’s boyfriend about what it’s like when you fancy someone because they’re boys.
“We think we’ve come a long way but I think it’s still very rife.”
Are you getting some poignant reactions from people after the show?
“We certainly are.
“I think my aim, with theatre especially, is to challenge and to delight.
“They’re really important things.
“I used to run a theatre company called Malaprop in Dublin and challenging and delighting were really important to us, and imagining.
“I think we really do that in The Flea.
“There’s three words that have stuck with me from a director that I met years ago in the Abbey called Cal McChrystal and he was just saying them in passing: It’s all about pleasure, trust and generosity.
“I want to get them tattooed on my face.
“I actually write them out and I stick them on the mirror in every dressing room that I go to now: Pleasure, trust and generosity.
“Because that’s what the audience is giving us, that’s what we’re giving them and the words that have really stuck with me from Jay Miller, the director of The Flea, are imagination and rigor.
“We’re all sweating up there. We are sweating in order to communicate how pressing this story is and also to make you laugh.
“We’re going to give you the one two, we’re going to make you laugh and we’re going to make you cry. That’s the plan.
“One audience member said, ‘She’s so funny, and then she ruined my whole world’ which is exactly what I want to do in this play.”
Tell us a little bit about your interpretation of Queen Victoria..
“The time that we’re meeting her is a very particular time in her life in that she was quite secluded from the public.
“She had said she was going to enter a period of official mourning when she lost her husband, Albert which then ended up being the rest of her life.
“This is 27 years after his death and she still feels it every day.
“She’s still wearing black.
“She’s still at home, not doing public engagements.
“We’re kind of looking at someone in that state of isolation and burdened with a lot of ‘heavy is the head…’
“What’s really interesting for me to play is her relationship with her family because that’s what Emily is also showing us.
“Emily is showing how she relates to her son, what she’ll do to keep her son safe, keep her housing in place, because otherwise she’s at the hands of Jack the Ripper.
“And Victoria interacting with her son and talking about her grandson is a totally different kettle of fish.
“The set really highlights the status of each group of characters.
“We’ve got Emily at the bottom, we’ve got lords, then we’ve got cops, and then we’ve got the royalty.
“She’s quite physically, very literally, miles above the rest of the crowd.
“I’m on a plinth very far up.
“Something I’ve enjoyed a lot is the bird like quality to someone high up watching everything.
“How much control they have over what’s happening below them, how a bird can mean a hawk or a vulture, or it can mean the common pigeon.
“I’ve really enjoyed that way of getting in, that way into the interpretation because I’m never going to do the Judi Dench, I’m never going to do the Emily Blunt or the Jenna Coleman. They’re done. They’re doing the beautiful Netflix work. This is highlighting an afternoon in her life.”
Breffni is based in London and it came about rather ‘accidentally’ as she came to perform a show and found herself stuck here with lockdown.
“I came over to do a show called Collapsible in The Bush Theatre and then when the lockdowns hit, I kind of accidentally put down roots.
“Since then, I’ve become quite involved in my local community.
“I think the lockdowns made a lot of us kind of reprioritise and reconfigure.
“I certainly recalibrated and realised that I can’t represent life on stage or screen without having more of one.
“I work for two different helplines. I help run a soup kitchen and food bank in my local area and I work for a prison charity which has made working on The Flea all the more fascinating to me because the threat of imprisonment is there and I work in a Victorian prison in London. Not much has changed.
“Taking away the primary reasons that I do these things which is to support other people, in selfish ways it gives me perspective on life and that going a little while between acting jobs isn’t the end of the world. I’ve got real responsibilities and real cares in the world now.”
You spoke of your work with the helpline, that must be rewarding..
“It’s a real way to for people to feel heard and I think that’s really important because even in The Flea people are shouting out for help and they’re not being heard because they’re not being listened to or maybe they’re not shouting out for help but it’s still our duty as other human beings to notice when someone needs that help even if they’re not asking for it, you know?”
Breffni has a male partner but identifies as bisexual.
“My partner and I have been together a long time.
“My father actually rang me recently and he said, ‘Breffni are you bisexual?’
“And I burst out laughing.
“I said, ‘Dad, where have you been? I’m 32’.
“I came out when I was 15 or something.
“And he said, ‘But you’re with a man now so I thought…’
“It’s so nice to be able to have that conversation, we all learn something new every day.
“But that was a very funny phone call to get on a random Thursday morning or whatever it was.”
It mustn’t have been easy to come out as a teenager with the place Ireland was in..
“I can’t speak to any major traumas there. I’m very lucky. I had a very accepting family.
“I know that a lot of people aren’t as lucky, unfortunately.”
The Flea is at The Yard Theatre, Unit 2a Queen’s Yard, London E9 5EN
until 30 November.
For more information, click here.
