Scriptwriter and actor Mark O’Halloran spoke to David Hennessy ahead of his play Conversations After Sex coming to the London stage.
Mark O’Halloran’s acclaimed play Conversations after Sex comes to the London stage at the end of this month.
Mark O’Halloran, from Ennis, Co. Clare, is well known as an actor and scriptwriter.
His screenwriting credits include Adam & Paul (which he also starred in), Garage and the RTÉ series Prosperity, all of which were directed by Lenny Abrahamson. More recently he has penned episodes of the series, Conversations with Friends and the feature film, Rialto.
On screen he has been seen in Mary & George alongside Julianne Moore, The Miracle Club and Shane Meadows’ The Virtues.
Conversations After Sex is a story of unexpected encounters, anonymous strangers and unguarded intimacy.
It depicts a woman meeting a carousel of different men, finding herself uncovering more than she expected.
Themes like grief, loneliness, promiscuity and connection are all examined.
The play debuted at Dublin Theatre Festival 2021 and won Best New Play at the Irish Times Awards in 2022.
Ye You Productions bring it to the London stage with Jess Edwards directing a cast of Olivia Lindsay, Julian Moore- Cook and Jo Herbert.
Conversations After Sex is the young company’s debut production.
This is the play’s UK premiere, looking forward to it?
“Yeah, it’s funny enough.
“When it first came around, I didn’t get to see it that often.
“I felt I had missed out on where it had gotten to so it’s nice to know that it’s got this other life now.
“It would be nice to get back to the play and just listen to it and see what this new company has brought to it.
“It is the first time I’ve had theatre work done in London.
“It’s great.”
What inspired Conversations After Sex?
“It began with an idea about wanting to write something about intimacy in the modern world and how people mediate their love lives nowadays.
“I also decided I wanted to write a play about grief and about somebody who’s living in the immediate aftermath of a loved one having taken their own life.
“I wanted to then do it by trying to figure out how somebody going through that trauma finds intimacy and that’s how the play came about.
“The play does exactly what it says on the tin.
“It’s conversations after sex so the sex doesn’t happen.
“In the production that we did, there was nudity and there’s a bed and there’s physical intimacy, but there is no sexual congress.
“It’s in the aftermath of that strange physical action that drives us all but after that action has happened, there is a moment where strangers, who have chosen each other in whatever way they do, have to find a communication and it’s about that reaching out to each other basically.”
Is it that the sex allows her to drop her guard?
“I think also it allows her to not think for a while about all the trauma that she’s going through.
“It allows her to invest in a primitive physicality and afterwards then, she’s got to put herself back together again and see, is there really an honest exchange going on between her and the various partners that she chooses?
“I mean she has spent a lot of time in her life caring for people: For her father first who passed away and left her the house that she lives in, and then for her lover who suffered from fairly catastrophic mental health issues.
“She spent all that time and she lost contact with friends and she has a fairly fractious relationship with a sister who is in the play as well and so she needs to get out into the world and she finds it easier to talk to strangers than she does to the people who are actually in her life.
“She’s also discovering this about herself as well.
“She surprises herself with some of the things that she does and says.
“She’s fairly chaotic. She drinks and takes drugs and all of that sort of stuff as well.”
You say you didn’t get to see the play when it was going around but did you get a sense of the reaction, the conversation it had opened up?
“Yeah, that was interesting.
“You know, it’s funny.
“When I first came to Dublin in 1990/ 1991, a play like this would have been absolutely and utterly shocking and now it’s like, ‘Who gives a damn?’
“And people weren’t talking about it as being like, ‘Oh my god, there’s nudity on the stage and there’s this, that the other’.
“They were talking about, ‘Yeah, I think she made the wrong decision there’.
“It’s like people are really having a normal adult conversation about these familiar things.
“I think there was one or two people who thought that I was somehow trying to proselytise for promiscuity which actually the play doesn’t do that at all, it’s actually a play about loneliness.”
The play deals with tough subject matter.
You have mentioned grief but there is also other things such as domestic violence.
I guess these are things you have got to have a responsibility with and can also be so affecting for an audience..
“I wanted to show somebody who faces these things that so many people do, but survives it and comes through it.
“And these subjects aren’t lightly dropped in.
“I really wanted to show somebody who is going through the awful pain of it but where there has been a catharsis of sorts.
“So hopefully people will get that from it.”
And if they get that from it, I imagine that’s more rewarding than any award…
“If somebody gets something out of it, no matter how big or small, that’s me happy.
“If they’re entertained by it also, it’s also good.
“It was about just trying to find the truth of it.
“I know that if you’re being reckless with yourself, as the character in the play is, she’s just so chaotic, that there’s a danger happens and she enters the danger.
“I wanted to show the truth of what can happen.
“And she does get beaten up and assaulted and it’s quite painful to watch for the audience but she comes through and she’s resilient and she puts herself back together.”
There will also be post-show Q&As featuring Rhea Norwood and Jordan Stephens.
Rhea Norwood made her West End debut in 2024 as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Playhouse Theatre.
Previously she is known for her roles in Heartstopper, Consent and Your Christmas or Mine 2.
Best known as one half of Rizzle Kicks, Jordan is a musician, writer, and performer with a diverse creative career spanning music, television, and literature.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the conversation is opened up, isn’t it?
“Yeah, it’s always good to listen to what an audience has to say.
“I listen to them during a play as well.
“I like to listen to what the vibe is in an audience because every night is different and also then at a Q and A, it’s really fascinating to hear what things they bring up.”
It would be interesting to see if you find the English audience different to the Irish audience..
“Yeah, each of us comes with our own cultural baggage, I suppose.
“It was funny.
“I did a play as an actor in the Almeida the end of 2023, a production of Portia Coughlan.
“In Ireland Portia Coughlan plays to a lot of laughs, people find it funny as well as horrific.
“For an English audience, I think they just found it horrific. They couldn’t tap into the really, really dark sense of humour so it will be interesting to see whether people find this funny in any way or whether they find it really dark.
“I think that the Irish sense of humour is nestled always in darkness and so it’s an interesting one, we’ll see.”
I saw that production of Portia Coughlan and was laughing all the way through it..
“You could tell when there was Irish people in actually, because when there was Irish people in, suddenly there was laughter in the audience whereas when it was a mostly English audience, they just went for taking it really seriously and I think they were a little bit horrified by it.”
The cast also included Sorcha Cusack and stars of big shows such as Derry Girls and Young Offenders.
What was it like to be part of such a great cast?
Alison Oliver is fantastic, isn’t she?
“She was absolutely amazing.
“I actually wrote some episodes of Conversations with Friends for her.
“I think she’s absolutely extraordinary but it was a brilliant cast.
“We were really close and tight.
“And working with one of the Cusack dynasty and Kathy Kiera Clark and Chris Wally and Fergal McElherron, it was just a really, really great tight cast.
“And we loved going on stage every night.
“We were really proud of that work.
“It wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea but that’s what art is, you know?”
You just mentioned Conversations with Friends but what was also cool about that was that it brought you back together with Lenny Abrahamson (Oscar-nominated director of Room, Frank, Normal People)..
“Which was amazing, after ages and ages because he wandered off and became an international star so it was lovely getting back together and it’s always a pleasure working with Len. He’s a close friend and his work is extraordinary so it was a great honour.”
You wrote, and starred in, Lenny Abrahamson’s debut feature film, Adam & Paul. You also wrote his follow-up, Garage which starred Pat Shortt, and the RTE series Prosperity.
Do you still get reminded of these things day in day out particularly Adam & Paul due to you acting in it as well and its almost cult like status at this stage…
“It has played such a major part in my life.
“People still watch it which I’m really amazed by.
“It’s 20 years since it was made and young fellas here, like 14, 15-year-olds go, ‘Are you Adam and Paul? Jaysus!’
“And wanting to get selfies with me and all that.
“It’s kind of gas because it’s such an underground film but I think that a lot of people here in Dublin feel a sense of ownership of that film.
“They feel like, ‘Yeah, that’s our film’.
“And I think that’s really good because it’s not a pretentious film.
“It’s a film that’s honest and funny and proud to give an honest portrait of people who are suffering.
“I can’t tell you how much I am proud of that film and I’m saddened in ways as well because Tom (Murphy, co- lead who passed in 2007 at the age of 39) is gone but we captured him at his very greatest.
“I think his performance is magnificent.
“That film changed my life in lots of ways.”
Going back to Conversations with Friends for a minute. The author Sally Rooney has had a significant impact with that and Normal People, it probably created an environment that people were ready for this play Conversations After Sex..
“I think she’s a really important writer for a whole generation.
“There’s a whole generation of young women who feel that Sally Rooney is painting their lives in lots of ways and I think that that’s really important.
“I think it’s been difficult for her because she gets singled out all the time and there’s lots of people who want to write snidey articles about her and all that.
“But she’s brilliant.
“She’s just this fantastic success story and I think she should be celebrated.”
People were also snide about Edna O’Brien, weren’t they?
“Absolutely.
“Edna O’Brien, that documentary is really interesting.
“I had somebody who was talking to me going, ‘Oh God, it’s such a sad documentary’.
“I was like, ‘Edna O’Brien won. She f**king won because she wrote right to the end of her life’.
“Her final books are really brilliant.
“She was recognised for all of the phenomenal work that she did.
“I had the pleasure of meeting her once and I just thought she was a queen and there’s no doubt about it.
“Edna O’Brien is a hero.”
Like Edna, you’re from Clare. When you came of age and wanted to pursue a career in the creative arts, was it a case of having to get out of Ennis, go to Dublin or even London to make that happen?
“I didn’t want to stay at home either.
“It’s not as if it was, ‘Oh my God, if there was a theatre company, I would have stayed’.
“I just couldn’t wait to get out of Ennis for a number of reasons: My sexuality.
“Also I love rock and roll and going to gigs and bands weren’t playing really in Ennis.
“I really loved living in a city.
“It also felt like it’s really hard to stand up in a small town and say, ‘I want to be an actor and writer’, because people know you whereas when you come to the city, you can reinvent yourself in whatever way you need to in order to get your brain working in that way.”
You said that 30+ years ago, this play could have caused outrage. Doesn’t that show how Ireland has changed?
“Yes, and it’s not just change that some people say has happened.
“It’s absolutely changed.
“This play probably wouldn’t have been put on 30 years ago and nowadays it’s not shocking.
“It’s just people see it as being a part of life in some way.”
You mentioned your sexuality. Do you think it would be much easier for you growing up in these times?
“Yeah, I mean people come out when they’re like 15 nowadays.
“That would have just been impossible for me to even contemplate.
“I was too confused by things and I was too frightened.
“I decided to stay in Ireland regardless of my sexuality and was like, ‘F**k you all. I don’t give a damn’.
“And I was always very out in the workplace, in my private life, in interviews with people as I began to be better known.
“I was like, ‘F**k it’.
“And I think that that kind of stand caused people to go like, ‘Oh, okay’.
“I think when I came to about 20 I was like, ‘I couldn’t give a f**k about what you think about me’.
“And I was like, ‘Right. Up yours. Don’t care’.
“And this was before even decriminalisation.
“I tell people that I went on Pride marches in 1991 or ‘92 in Dublin where there was literally a few hundred people walking down O’Connell Street.
“There weren’t even enough people to stop the traffic and now on the pride marches, there’s 60,000 people in Dublin.”
Clearly there was a big change going from a crowd of a few hundred to the referendum of 2015 and that euphoria…
“I think the young people of Ireland just went, ‘Fuck no, not having it’.
“And It was glorious to see really.”
There is a debate now about non- gay actors playing gay roles, is it an issue or what’s your take on that?
“It depends.
“For me this is an issue that goes from project to project.
“For years gay actors weren’t allowed to be out and they were seen as unbankable.
“They wouldn’t get parts etcetera.
“So now when a gay actor sees a non-gay actor getting a gay role they go, ‘Is this f**king going on still?’
“Look at something like Brokeback Mountain. They were both straight guys. It had an impact.
“It was an amazing show and they were brilliant at it.
“There are times when you should have a gay actor.
“There’s times when it doesn’t matter.
“It depends on the project.
“It’s the whole thing about how do you represent trans people on stage and whether you have trans actors play trans roles only.
“These things need to be talked about and be open about but I don’t have any hard or fast rules about them to be honest with you.
“I’ve played straight people.
“I’ve played gay people.
“I don’t think it’s as massive an issue as people think it is.”
Conversations after Sex plays 30 April- 17 May at Park Theatre.
For more information and to book, click here.