Seeking the writer within

Described as a Belfast Eugene O'Neill, playwright Owen McCafferty has been penning breathtaking dramas which describe Northern Ireland politics from an intimately personal perspective. Karen Fricker looks for the author in his work.

Critics  and producers liken him to a Belfast Eugene O'Neill. His work has been produced by nearly every Northern Irish theatre, and some very important ones in the Republic of Ireland and England, including Druid and the Royal National Theatre. Both the Peacock and the Lyric theatres are known to be avidly interested in his work. He is "one of the most special voices to come out of Ireland in the last 10 years", according to one artistic director, and "one of our greatest writers", according to another.

His name is Owen McCafferty. Ever heard of him? You have now.

There are numerous reasons why this fine writer has, so far, remained relatively little-known outside theatre circles - and why his moment seems to have arrived. One is that, until three years ago, he did not have an agent, and his work primarily circulated around his native Belfast. Another is that, according to many who know his work well, he has just recently hit his stride: "Owen has truly found his voice in the last two years," says Paula McFetridge, artistic director of the Lyric Theatre.

Still another may be that he does not do interviews, stating (through proxy) that whatever he has to say is there in the work - a brave choice in a world where personality and the useful explaining quote have become crucial tools in promoting artistic products.

Talking to others about him, it becomes clear that this is not prima-donna behaviour on McCafferty's part: his colleagues describe him as genial, down-to-earth, dead serious about his writing and highly opinionated about Northern Irish politics and culture (he reportedly watches Stormont Live compulsively and can't help yelling at the telly).

He is also, they say, a remarkably certain writer who only takes commissions if he has a clear idea for a play in mind, rarely rewrites in rehearsal and is very particular about the way his text appears on the page, using slashes to indicate thought or breath breaks so that the lines look like poetry. McCafferty clearly knows what he's doing - so if we take him on his word and look to his texts for answers, his larger project should make itself clear, right? The simple answer is that it's not that simple.

McCafferty's plays are far from unapproachable or formally "difficult" - he is a brilliant writer of character, and there are few things more compelling on stage than a complex human being - but they avoid specifics and resist definitive interpretation. He delivers people and situations and leaves us to figure out what the bigger message might be. Again, this is brave - particularly where Northern Irish material is concerned.

Take Closing Time, his latest play, which was produced by the Royal National Theatre in its recent "Transformations" season, and which visits the Tivoli Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival from October 8th-12th. The lights come up on two men asleep in a Belfast bar: they are the owner, Robbie (played by Jim Norton), and a customer, Joe (Lalor Roddy) - who, we later discover, hasn't slept at home in 13 years even though his house is just over the road. As the two men continue to snooze, Robbie's wife Vera (Pam Ferris) comes in with another customer, Iggy (Patrick O'Kane) - their guilty demeanour and the fact that she hasn't put her skirt on yet are rather clear indications that she served him more than pints the night before.

The drink and the chat start up, and slowly the situation comes into focus: the bar was bombed over a decade ago, but the compensation money has been drunk away, and Robbie is in serious financial trouble. Joe's wife ran off after the bombing, and he's never recovered from losing her; Iggy's been thrown out by his wife; and Vera is sick of Robbie's lack of potency in every aspect of his life. The fifth and final character, Alec (Kieran Ahern), rounds out this group of listless sad-sacks: the victim of a shooting a few years ago, he is slightly brain damaged and does odd jobs around the pub to support himself.

We never find out if the characters are Protestant or Catholic because it's not particularly relevant to the situation. Mentions of political conflict are few and in passing. The characters sit, they talk, they booze, they procrastinate: nothing seems to happen, and yet the play is gripping. "One of the things about Owen's plays is that they seem to go nowhere, but the journey takes you to many places," says his agent, Sebastian Born.

So what's Closing Time about? Depends on who's watching. For the Daily Telegraph's critic Charles Spencer, it is unequivocally a play about the perils of drink: "The characters are trapped in a vodka-sodden wasteland, seeking oblivion rather than pleasure through the bottle, while desperately clinging to ridiculous fantasies which are brutally dashed in the course of the play". For the Guardian's Michael Billington, the subject is politics: "It is impossible not to see the play as a metaphor for Northern Ireland's own political stasis".

This latter reading, however, sends the artistic director behind the production into something of a furious tailspin. "Owen McCafferty would have absolutely no truck with that argument," says Mick Gordon, who produced the "Transformations" series at the RNT and is himself from Belfast. "Owen, like many of us, is bored with the notion that the only thing Northern Irish playwrights can write about, either directly or metaphorically, is the Troubles.

"My opinion is that if Owen is making any political statement in his work, it is that the Troubles are very far in the background. They don't impinge on the narrative engine of his play, or the thematic investigation. Like all major playwrights Owen McCafferty knows that to be more general and to be more broadly human in your investigation you have to write the context specifically, and his context is Belfast."

THIS isn't the first time that McCafferty has used politics as a backdrop rather than as immediate subject matter; one might even suggest (stepping gingerly to avoid pigeon-holing) this as one of his defining techniques. In his 1998 play Mojo-Mickybo, two Belfast boys play-act their own version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and we only realise slowly and indirectly that their friendship is doomed because one of them is Protestant and the other Catholic.

"What Owen has to offer is that for him it's not about the Troubles or the healing of the Troubles," says Karl Wallace, who directed Mojo-Mickybo for the Belfast company Kabosh. "That is within the characters as they develop. He has a good eye for situations and stories which in their language and their text are rich, without banging on about the one central theme which every one thinks is the main theme." Kabosh has had an enormous success with Mojo Mickybo, and is taking their award-winning production out on a boggling fifth tour this autumn and winter, including several dates in the Republic.

McCafferty's short play Courtroom No 1 was arguably the strongest individual contribution to Tinderbox Theatre Company's award-winning Convictions project in 2000; in it a lone man, played by Lalor Roddy, is forced by an unseen voice to repeat the story of his life over and over again; we realise eventually that he is dead and in some kind of purgatory, having been killed by stray sectarian gunfire.

"To me that's not dodging politics," says Eamon Quinn, general manager of Tinderbox. "Its about the effects of the conflict on ordinary people, about someone who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Both Courtroom No 1 and Closing Time were directed by James Kerr, who sees McCafferty's oblique take on politics as its own political stance: "To think of Owen as a political writer is actually quite enlightening. He wants to look at Belfast in another way and insists on his own vision - I findthat terribly refreshing. It's so deliberately not didactic, but he can't help express his feeling about the future of Belfast."

Just what that future vision might be is - typically - up for discussion. One cast member of Closing Time told me he thought the play offered a hugely positive message for Northern Ireland because the characters do find a way, in the end, to take some action in their lives. For me, it was hard not to see the play's title as some kind of exasperated prophecy: the only hope for these sad people, and their city, is to shut it all down. Doubtless, the debate will continue in the foyer of the Tivoli in a few weeks' time.

McCafferty's future, on the other hand, looks pretty bright. He has completed a commission for a large-scale full-length play for the RNT entitled Troubled (hmmm!). His 1997 play Shoot the Crow, which was originally staged by Druid, is being produced next year at the Royal Exchange Studio Manchester, and there's already talk of a London transfer. There's the Mojo-Mickybo tour and the possibility of commissions from the Peacock, the Lyric and Tinderbox. For McCafferty, doing things on his own terms is clearly paying off.

Closing Time runs from October 8th to 12th at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin, as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival (see www.dublintheatrefestival.com). Booking on tel: 1850-374643