Ruairi Conaghan told David Hennessy about his new play that was inspired by his own breakdown that came after playing Brighton Bomber Pat Magee which became so overwhelming due to his own uncle being murdered by the IRA.
When actor Ruairi Conaghan played the role of Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee on stage, he didn’t realise it would compound repressed trauma from his uncle’s murder by the IRA fifty years ago in 1974.
The trauma he experienced revealed itself in a physical and mental breakdown when he was playing Player King in a production of Hamlet at the Barbican starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
When offered the role of Player King in the Barbican’s Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor, whose work also includes Downton Abbey, was unaware that Shakespeare’s evocative speeches would stir up repressed trauma, compounded by playing Magee.
Fifty years ago in 1974, an eight-year-old Ruairi Conaghan lost his uncle, Judge Rory Conaghan, murdered by an IRA gunman disguised as a postman.
He was shot dead on his doorstep whilst holding his nine-year-old daughter’s hand.
The murder of Judge Conaghan and magistrate Martin McBurney on the same day were two of the earliest shootings of Catholic judges in an IRA campaign which continued for 20 years. The shootings rocked the nation and were immortalised in a poem by Michael Longley CBE.
Marking the 50th anniversary of his murder, his daughters said they were committed to seeking justice.
No one has been held accountable for Judge Conaghan’s death.
Ten years later in 1984, the IRA man Patrick Magee attempted to assassinate Margaret Thatcher by planting a bomb in the Brighton Grand Hotel, killing five people.
In Lies Where It Falls, Ruairi recounts the experience of meeting and playing Patrick Magee in the controversial play, The Bombing of the Grand Hotel, and how the toll of playing the man became part of a growing internal trauma which eventually materialised in a physical and mental collapse that threatened his life.
Lies Where It Falls, which comes to Finborough Theatre this month, is Ruairi’s story of the pervasiveness of trauma, the healing powers of theatre and the legacy of The Troubles.
Lies Where It Falls premiered at the Lyric Theatre Belfast and played at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024.
Ruairi Conaghan, from Belfast, is known most recently for his roles as David Trimble in Owen McCafferty’s Agreement, Kiernan Branson in season 3 of Downton Abbey, and various roles at the Donmar, the Bush, Royal Court and on Broadway and the West End. His performance in Hamlet can be found on Amazon.
Ruairi Conaghan, 58, told The Irish World: “I started writing Lies Where It Falls in about 2018.
“It’s about the year 2015.
“I had two jobs that year, both in theatre, which were long running.
“One was where I played Pat Magee in the Brighton bombing play, and then I appeared as the Player King in the Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet that happened that year.
“My uncle was a Catholic judge who was murdered by the IRA in 1974 whom I was named after and I had never really played people from Republican background before, not for any great moral reason, just because I didn’t really feel I could bring truth to them or bring a kind of authenticity. These kinds of things are very important to me as an actor.
“But Pat Magee was different because he had this experience with Jo Berry, this reconciliation process that they went through on their own, it was their personal reconciliation process.
“So Pat was more interesting for me and I felt this was a part that I could do and also would lie well with me in terms of my kind of political thinking and moral thinking based on my family legacy.
“But part of that process was I had to meet Pat and get to understand him a little bit, get the physicality, get the voice and actually what happened there was- Although the meeting itself was very cordial, very polite, not much depth. Neither of us went into much depth because I think we were being too full of platitudes and that kind of stuff- But my head was kind of exploded.
“I was going through some really strange, weird thinking, ‘Here I am in a room with someone who represents an organisation that destroyed my family and I’m about to play him’.
“That felt very strange.
“But then almost immediately after the Brighton play, I was offered Hamlet: Wonderful, the job of my career, exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to do.
“I wanted to do Shakespeare in the national theatres of all our countries, but the Player King has a speech about the murder of King Priam by Pyrrus, who’s a young assassin and it all happens in front of Hecuba, his wife.
“It’s very, very graphic.
“It’s very brutal in terms of speech and just a weird thing happened to me in that I saw my uncle’s murder in this kind of scene and then I got very sick at first physically and then mentally.
“The physical impact was very strong.
“My body failed me and then also there was really debilitating, real chronic pain and that then hit my mental health.
“And all this time, I’m still trying to get through the job.
“I’m still trying to survive in the job (Hamlet).
“And then when I got through it my family took me to Donegal, and we went through a healing process which actually worked hence I’m here today and with you talking about it.
“That was when I thought, ‘I’ve got a story to tell here. There’s something about my story that will resonate with people, I think’.
“Hence I wrote Lies Where it Falls.”
So is it a case of playing yourself or a fictionalised version of yourself?
“No, I play absolutely the truthful version of myself but I also play everyone else in the story.”
Is it hard to revisit such a traumatic time in your life?
“Initially, there was some challenges with that.
“I did 25 shows in Edinburgh.
“There was a certain kind of emotional tiredness but the value of it was that I felt that it resonated with my audiences whether that was people that were from the Irish diaspora or even just people that understood trauma, or maybe they understood recovery from illness.
“Everyone had something that they could identify with in terms of my story.
“That kind of boosts me, the reaction to it.
“But as well as that, it’s my job.
“I’m an actor and I’ve written a play, and my job is to tell that story.
“So I can make that separation.
“I don’t go into a world where it becomes too dark for me.
“I can make the separation because I understand this is an important story and I want to tell it as best as I possibly can.”
Does it open conversation? After the show do people come to you with their trauma and that lead to some poignant sharing?
“That was what threw me about the reaction to the play.
“I would do the play and then someone would say something like, ‘Could I have a quiet word with you, Ruairi?
“And they would then tell me their story.
“They would tell me a story that was clearly hidden for them.
“I mean, I held my silence for over 30 years and people clearly had their silence there but they saw possibly in my story someone that they could relate to and they could tell, so people would tell me.
“It was kind of kind of daunting and threw me at first but then I realised, ‘Well, this is the deal, Ruairi. You’ve written this story. People identify with it. They want to then feel that they can tell you their story as well’.
“So I would get messages on social media with stories or when I was in Edinburgh, for example, it wasn’t necessarily to do with Northern Ireland.
“I remember there was a young American woman there who really was triggered and identified with the story of recovery and particularly around mental health.
“I saw her after, ‘Are you okay?’
“And she says, ‘Yeah. It really was wonderful but it triggered some of my own recovery thinking’.
“And I thought, ‘Well, I hope that was a help’.
“And it was. It gave her a kind of catharsis.
“For me that is what’s great about it.
“It works as a story about the conflict in Northern Ireland but it also works as a story about recovery and how to get through physical issues, mental health issues, that kind of thing.”
It is 50 years this year since your uncle’s killing.
This show demonstrates that the trauma is never over and you don’t have to be the person hit by the bullet to be a victim..
“One of my cousins was holding his hand as he was murdered.
“That kind of trauma is unparalleled really.
“Even after 50 years, I think what was a realisation for our family was that silence doesn’t help.
“We gathered in Donegal for his 50th anniversary and it was an attempt to celebrate a life rather than mourn the horrible passing of it.
“But the shock of it is still there and that’s 50 years down the road.
“The brutality of it, it’s all still there.
“And if that’s happening to us, there are 4,000 other families that are dealing with exactly the same kind of issue whether it was 1974 or 1994.
“I have a line in the play where I talk about ‘time isn’t the great healer It claims to be, sometimes it just allows the rage to ferment’.
“It can cause more damage as it goes further on in time.
“I’m an actor and a writer and so I have a skill set to tell my story.
“Other people don’t have that skill set.
“I think it’s important for us as artists to help that.
“I work with Wave Trauma over here in Belfast, who are a brilliant organisation that work with victims and get them to tell their stories and support them in ways that they can express themselves properly.”
Your story and others like it also show that, in contrast to the sentiment of Boris Johnson and his legacy act, you can’t just draw a line under these things..
“The reality is that it’s just not the case.
“That showed his crassness. His crassness was that, ‘Oh, it’s over. It’s fine. The story’s over. It’s finished. We don’t need to deal with that anymore’.
“That explains a man who doesn’t understand empathy.
“The Labour government had stated in their manifesto that they were going to reverse that, but they’ve given it a little fudge.
“It’s now in a position where there’s a reconciliation organisation where people can take their cases in the hope of justice.
“How far down the line it goes is yet to be chosen.
“In 2015 there were 3,269 unsolved killings.
“That’s virtually 70, 80% of the people that are dead so there is a vast array of cases in which people have not had justice or even just some kind of understanding and furthermore an apology if that is what is required.
“Although an apology, what impact will that have?”
We spoke about the story of Pat Magee and Jo Berry, whose father was killed in the Brighton bombing. They have somehow become friends in spite of what has happened but Pat faced his time in jail.
There can be no reconciliation with justice, can there?
“Yeah, Pat was one of the solved cases. He did his time. He was put in jail and he was released as part of the Good Friday Agreement and we all signed up to Good Friday agreement.
“That was something that we supported.
“I have a lot of respect for Pat and Jo in terms of they’ve taken on board their own personal reconciliation.
“I think we need a formal one here in Northern Ireland.
“I think we need an organisation.
“Generations now are passing away so there’s an intergenerational trauma now.
“You’ve got children of people that are victims that are still seeking the justice for their parents.”
As you say there are so many other stories of families like yours. I am thinking of the family of Pat Finucane..
“Pat Finucane’s murder is part of the list of judicial murders that happened throughout the conflict.
“Predominantly the IRA targeted Catholic judges.
“But of course Loyalist paramilitaries, possibly in collusion with the state, targeted high profile associations with Republicanism: Rosemary Nelson, Pat Finucane- The brutality of all of those murders.
“What’s jarring is the symbolism of all of these murders
“Their murders are remarkably similar.
“Pat Finucane was shot at his breakfast table.
“My uncle was shot on his doorstep after breakfast.
“A number of judges were shot after mass.
“They were literally coming out of mass as they were assassinated.
“There were cases of mistaken identity. An entire family was killed coming back from Disneyland because they thought they were targeting judge Ian Higgins.
“The brutalities of those murders, the symbolism of those murders.
“People see a statistic. They don’t see the actual image of what happened.”
Ruairi also wants to make it clear that the play is entertaining. Although it deals with serious issues, it has a lot of humour too.
“The gallows Northern Irish humour is very much a part of my story and I know people listen more when they’re laughing.
“Sean O’Casey can make you laugh and cry in one line.
“It was important for me to write a play that was entertaining and that people would say I enjoyed being in that room for that time.
“It’s a play that ends with hope.
“I’m still here, and I’m still here to write this story so that in its very self is the nature of the hope.”
If you could go back now, would you not take on the role of Pat Magee?
This is a question the Ruairi does have to think about for a moment.
“There was there was value in me doing that and I think it was a lesson to me.
“Nobody knew that my history in that theatre company or people involved.
“Nobody knew my what I had gone through but I knew what I was doing was kind of unique in a way, playing this part and being from the background that I am, so I’m sure I would have done.
“I suppose my only regret is because I was very unwell during Hamlet and I think that that meant that that job, which was an extraordinary experience and the job of my career, is tainted because I felt I couldn’t deliver the performance that I think I could have achieved if I was well.”
Andy Jordan Productions Ltd presents Lies Where it Falls at Finborough Theatre 26 November – 21 December.
For more information and to book, click here.
