Returning from London, where my parents had lived for seventeen years, my family were in Ireland only a couple of years when the bombing of eighteen soldiers took place at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, a few miles from where we lived – and where I still live - in Dundalk. I don’t remember this terrible event, which occurred on August 27th 1979. Most of the press attention at the time went to another IRA atrocity that had taken place on the same day: the bombing of a boat in Mullaghmore, Sligo, which killed its passengers – Earl Mountbatten and two crew members. I do remember that event being on the news. The death of the 18 soldiers was pretty much overshadowed at the time by the death of a British royal. It is the Narrow Water atrocity that forms the backdrop to my play, The Naturalists, which is about to receive its world premiere in New York, presented by the Pond Theatre Company.
According to Tim Pat Coogan, the Narrow Water bombings were pivotal in Irish-British relations as the event which instigated the British Government’s policy of “Ulsterisation” (after the earlier US policy of “Vietnamisation”), whereupon, in the aftermath of Narrow Water, the RUC would be given more powers to deal “in house” with loss of life, particularly of soldiers. The purpose of this was so that the British public would stop asking of their government sticky questions such as, “why are we in the North of Ireland in the first place?” and, so the problem could be passed back to the North and effectively to the island of Ireland, becoming well and truly “the Irish problem”.
The process of Ulsterisation – keeping the problems of the North in the North – seems to have continued until recently. Even today, with regards the current debacle in Northern Ireland about abortion, which is now out of kilter with the South (after the recent successful Yes vote in the Republic), the instinct of Westminster is to keep the matter contained within the powder keg of the North, a way, perhaps, of continuing to appear to be “hands off”, while in reality operating a form of (convenient) socio-political quarantine.
In my play, the central character of Francis is a former bombmaker. He is the “mastermind” behind the Narrow Water bombings – and is an entirely fictional character, as no one, in fact, was ever charged for this crime. In Francis, I wanted to create a character with a past that was particularly complicated. I wanted the character to have done something so dark that he could barely forgive himself for it – mainly, because I wanted to see how a broken human being can come back to a moral stature of some kind, is able to reset his moral compass. I also wanted to look at what such a crime does to the immediate family of the perpetrator (and not the victim in this instance) – and how, through the forces of nature and love, he and his family (Billy, his brother) find their way back to some semblance of normality.
All the characters in the play are emotionally disfigured in some way, and all via the environment of the play, find a way towards harmony. The harmony they find is not Religious – but something that awakens within them, is in tune with nature, whereby the three main characters, Billy, Josie and Francis eventually develop a healing relationship “where all is shared”. I found the best way for these “crooked” characters to grow, was – together.
When I would visit my father’s home in the Ox Mountains in Sligo as a child, we were familiar with a pair of bachelor farmers – both of whom were reputedly in love with one of my aunts. In this part of my story I’m on the same turf as Iris Murdoch in her novel, An Unofficial Rose in which the character of Rosa has a relationship with two brothers – and also Sam Hanna Bell in his December Bride. As love comes into these characters’ lives they are able to accept their damage and are freed from it. Both Rosa and Sarah Gomartin (from December Bride) are able to exercise a freedom from being “owned” by one male lover - by being “shared” by two. In The Naturalists, Francis and Billy are able to move on from the past, in which they have been moored for years, via their growing friendship with the mysterious Josie, a woman who, like Francis, seems to have rejected modernity; Josie shows both brothers a way out of their past; and in the brothers’ difficulties Josie herself finds a renewed sense of purpose. At the end of the piece, Francis finds a way to eventually embrace the spirits of the eighteen soldiers he killed via the eighteen trees he plans to plant.
Written in 2009, the play was first read at the Flat Lake Festival in 2010, directed by Padraic McIntyre of Livin’ Dred Theatre Company. At that reading I overheard someone (who had been invited to the reading as he may have been important to the future of the play etc) say, “who needs another Troubles play” – and consequently I stuck the play in a drawer where it remained for five years. In 2014 I took it out of the drawer and it was read at the Clapham Omnibus Theatre in London, directed by Robyn Winfield-Smyth and starring Ruairi Connaughton as Francis. It was a great reading of the play. It has since been read again in Manchester, where it also received a wonderful reading.
Pond Theatre Company in New York will stage the World Premiere of The Naturalists in September; the cast and production team are magnificent. And in the spirit of the play – the directing of the play is shared between two women – the wonderful Lily Dorment and Colleen Clinton. The Naturalists previews from September 7th and runs until September 23rd at Walkerspace, 46 Walker Street,
New York, NY 10013,
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The cast of The Naturalists: John Keating, Sarah Street, Michael Melamphy, Tim Ruddy
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