How to describe a play like The Ferryman? Director Chris Avery tells us more about Jez Butterworth's Olivier and Tony award-winning play.
How to describe a play like The Ferryman? It’s about so many things – history, politics, Irish culture – but at its heart it’s a family drama. The Carneys of County Antrim in Northern Ireland, three generations living under the same roof: argumentative, loving, rambunctious, drinking whisky and tea in equal measure at any hour of the day or night, welcoming strangers and absorbing them into the family. In the midst of all the noise, though, there are silences. Ten years previously, one of the family went off to work one morning – and never came home.
The play is based on the experiences of many families in Northern Ireland. The stories of 21 of them are known – but it’s likely there were many more. The common factor is that the men who “disappeared” had been members of the IRA during The Troubles of 1968 – 1998.
Over the years there were many reported sightings – in southern Ireland, in Belfast, boarding the ferry, in a Liverpool pub. Hopes were raised, and then dashed, as nothing came of them. Eventually, the families stopped talking about their son, their brother, their husband. They lived in a strange limbo – decisions were postponed, relationships stagnated, grudges were not discussed. No one could move on. Anomalous situations arose, and went unresolved. Doubt and insecurity were constant presences. Children knew, and at the same time didn’t know, that something was wrong: “We just got a sense that it wasn’t something we talked about.”
That quote comes from Laura Donnelly, whose uncle, Eugene Simons, was one of The Disappeared. She’s now the wife of Jez Butterworth, and their conversation led to the writing of The Ferryman. Like Seamus Carney, her uncle’s body was discovered in a bog across the border in County Louth, and as in the play, discussion about his absence remained largely off limits among his family. The are silences during The Ferryman, which often are more eloquent than words in portraying the tensions which inevitably arise. The family who are left behind suffer for far longer than the man who was murdered, dreadful though his end must have been. Without discussion there can be no healing, and without knowledge there can be no discussion.
Laura concluded her interview with these words: “Silence is a dangerous and a painful thing.”
The Ferryman
by Jez Butterworth
Tue 28 April - Sat 02 May, 7.30PM & Sat 02 May, 2PM
ADC Theatre
Click here to book your tickets!