Theatre director Ben Barnes spoke to David Hennessy before he comes to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith with his reading of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These featuring Andrew Bennett (An Cailín Ciúin) and Eleanor McEvoy.
Following the critical success of the film starring Cillian Murphy, Claire Keegan’s Booker Prize-nominated novel Small Things Like These will come to the stage with a reading at the Irish Cultural Centre with Andrew Bennett (Seán in the Oscar-nominated An Cailín Ciúin which was also adapted from Claire Keegan’s Foster) accompanied by new music from well known singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy.
Small Things Like These is staged by Four Rivers Theatre Company and directed by former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre, Ben Barnes.
The Hammersmith show is part of a run of dates that also includes shows in Wexford, Dun Laoghaire, Bray, Waterford and even Paris.
Small Things Like These has been described as an unforgettable story of hope and heroism.
Described as ‘resonant and deeply moving’ by Hilary Mantel, the story is set in a rural Irish town in the 1980s in the run up to Christmas.
As coal merchant Bill Furlong does his rounds, he discovers a girl locked away in terrible conditions in the local convent.
Unlike the silent majority, he decides to do something about it.
The Irish World caught up with director Ben Barnes ahead of the reading coming to London.
What inspired you to stage the novella in this way?
“I’m very familiar with Claire’s work.
“I’m a great admirer of just how clear and how spare her writing is, and yet how evocative it is.
“I met her at the Kilmore’s Write by the Sea Arts Festival a couple of years ago and we got talking.
“I came up with the idea that it would be lovely to do a staged reading of Small Things Like These.
“Claire thought about it for a while and then she agreed and thought it was a good idea.
“One of the things that I wanted to do rather than just simply read the play on the stage was to provide some sort of atmospheric music to accompany it or to underscore some of the passages.
“I had worked with Eleanor McEvoy on a number of occasions, on various projects.
“I engaged Eleanor to write incidental music that underscores the words and Andrew Bennett, who audiences would probably know from the movie An Cailín Ciúin and many theatre productions, agreed to do the reading.
“I was delighted about that because Andrew has a very attractive speaking voice.
“We staged the work last year at the Wexford Arts Centre and subsequently in the Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire and in St Michael’s in New Ross where the book is set, and a couple of other venues.
“It had been nominated for the Booker Prize and everybody was talking about it.
“It was very much in the ether at the time when we did the reading, we weren’t surprised that all the performances that we did in every venue we went to sold out.
“It was a wonderful atmosphere in the theatre.
“I think we’re so used to things that are so spectacular and so visual in the films and on television these days and indeed in the theatre with musicals and big stage productions- It’s just wonderful for people to sit and, almost in an old fashioned way, listen to a story being effectively read to them albeit with some nice lighting.
“We rang some changes in the course of the reading.
“I didn’t want to complicate it too much but we just put in small things to create a sense of momentum in the piece, a sense of a change from chapter to chapter.
“It was quite mesmeric to me because you could hear a pin drop in the theatre, there was a very positive reaction to it.
“I think that the actor’s voice, Eleanor’s music and the small notes in the staging really created quite a special atmosphere.
“It proved very popular and we decided to revive it this year.
“We’re opening again at the Wexford Arts Centre next week and then we play two performances at the Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire and then we’re over to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith and we’re very much looking forward to our performances there.
“We’re very much looking forward to bringing it to London and subsequent to that, we’re bringing it back to Ireland and then we finish up in Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais on 25 January.”
Ben consulted the author as the reading developed.
“There were some small changes from one edition to the other and I consulted her on those because I wanted to make sure that every word that came out of the actor’s mouth were her words and not anybody else’s.”
The subject matter of Ireland’s dark past of mother and baby homes etc is a familiar one…
“People are very aware of that.
“In the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve had so many reports in this country into what happened within the church, what happened within the Magdalene laundries and within abuse in schools and so on.
“I think they’ve absorbed it through the reports that have come out, through the newspapers, through the TV and so on but when something like this comes along, which is a book that tells that story from the perspective that it does, I think it unlocks an emotion in people.
“They’re affected much more by a work of art than they are necessarily by a report that comes out that they may be aware of, or if they may have read the newspaper or seen on TV.
“So I do think every Irish person who would see this reading, it will resonate with them because they will know somebody, whether it’s through their own family or some associate or friend of theirs who has been touched by those experiences.
“It’s a very timely book in a lot of ways but it would be important to say that there’s great humanity in the book and the characters are drawn so wonderfully.
“It’s ultimately quite a shocking story but it’s so beautifully told that you feel the love that the writer has for her characters as well as anything censorious that’s in the book.
“It’s miraculous in that regard in that it’s something that you love to read even though it’s painful ultimately to read that story, it’s still uplifting in a funny kind of way.”
Furlong is a hero in the true sense of the word, isn’t he?
“Absolutely, he’s a working class hero if you want to put it like that.
“He’s not somebody who would take that mantle on.
“You get this thing in the course of the book where there’s something missing for him.
“There’s a feeling he has: ‘My life is going on. I’m not really making any difference’.
“And he just goes in a mundane way from day to day but there’s something that troubles him.
“When he goes to the convent and he sees what’s going on there, he walks away from it but it sort of still niggles at him.
“It niggles at him in a way that he worries.
“What’s really troubling him is that what he’s witnessed in the convent and that he hasn’t done anything to alleviate that situation.
“Of course he acts decisively in the way that he does so he’s a very moral man but a very humble man with that.
“I think that humility and yet that moral rectitude is a very attractive mix in Furlong in all sorts of small ways: The way he helps the children in the street, the way he talks about the town drunk, in kind of compassionate terms as opposed to censorious terms.
“We lived in very censorious times in provincial Ireland in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and Furlong is very much a counter to that, I think.
“He is a rather luminous character.
“I think he’s a very charismatic character in a quiet way.
“I think Furlong is someone that we would recognise in a lot of people in small towns in rural Ireland.
“I grew up in Wexford and would be familiar with New Ross where the book is set.
“I think the book sort of captures that period, captures the dilemma, captures the atmosphere of the town so well.
“I think the character of Furlong is such an attractive character in his own right.
“I think he has a moral dilemma and he finds his own way to actually address that and to act in the way he does but obviously the consequences of his actions, which the book doesn’t deal with, are very clear from how cleverly Claire has written the book.
“We understand the opposition that’s going to come from the town, from within his own family, from within the religious community as a result of the action that he’s taken.
“But nevertheless, Furlong feels he has done the right thing, and the book ends on a kind of a hopeful note for him.
“I think it’s the reason why I wanted somebody with the type of voice and sort of soulful presence that Andrew Bennett has to read this.
“Directors can only be as good as the actors they work with and Andrew is a very fine actor and has a great sensibility for this particular piece of work so it’s very easy to work with him on this.
“As I said at the beginning, the writing is so spare and it’s just so apt that there isn’t a wasted word in the entire book.
“Every time I read it, I’m very moved by it.
“Still, just reading it the other day to refresh my own memory on it before we go back into rehearsal.
“So many things in it is very evocative of my own childhood.
“I find it very moving still to read the book.
“I’m a big fan of Claire’s work and can’t wait for her next book to come out, as I’m sure is the case with a lot of people.”
You say the book was in the ether last year due to its Booke Prize nomination etc. This year we have seen the novella be made into a film with Cillian Murphy…
“Obviously the film has brought the book to international attention and it’s been very well received in the United States.
“Of course the film will open up the story to some extent, and it’s a very different experience than hearing the book read in the theatre in the way that we do it, so I hope that they’re complementary exercises and the fact that it’s in the ether at the moment as something that people are talking about again will whet people’s appetite to come and hear it read in the theatre as well.
“Although it’s a dark story in some ways, is set at Christmas time so doing it on a winter’s night in a theatre is very appropriate around the Christmas period.”
It was in 2022 that we had the record breaking success of An Cailín Ciúin which was adapted from Claire Keegan’s Foster.
Then this year we have had Small Things Like This adapted for the screen.
What do you think these things do for Claire as an author?
“I often think it’s a little bit bittersweet for writers that it’s often not until things are on television or they come out as films, a wider public sits up and takes notice.
“Writers write the books and they send them out into the world and people read them.
“Then they get refracted through the lens of a television camera or film and I think it becomes a very different thing. sometimes.
“Sometimes it can take it off in a different direction but it’s just a different art form.
“I think many of the writers that I’ve worked with and many of whom have had their plays or books made into films would say it’s great that that happens and brings in a whole new readership but it’s a whole different thing.
“I think the byproduct of the fact that there’s been a film and that there’s been films of Claire’s work is that the readership will increase.
“I think that can’t be a bad thing.”
Would you like to take it on the road for more shows even beyond this run?
“I think it’s very much a winter Christmas sort of thing.
“I mean, I did a piece by Eoin Colfer called My Real Life with Don Wycherly and we kept it on the go for about five years so we certainly wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing it again.
“The problem is that everybody’s very busy.
“Andrew works in film a lot these days.
“Eleanor is always touring.
“So it would be a question of trying to find space in everybody’s diary to do it again but because it’s a reading and it’s not something that needs to be learned, it’s something that we can revive relatively easily if the opportunity presents itself.”
Small Things Like These, A Staged Reading, comes to Irish Cultural Centre 20 and 21 December.
For more information or to book, click here.
The reading also comes to Wexford Arts Centre 12- 14 December, Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire 17- 18 December, Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray on 10 January and Garter Lane in Waterford 16- 17 January.
For more information on Four Rivers Theatre, click here.
