Ryan novel gets a stage treatment

A stage adaptation of a novel written by Nenagh's internationally renowned and multi-award winning writer Donal Ryan gets its World Premiere in the Arts Centre of his native town from July 6-8.

Decadent Theatre Company and Galway Arts Centre present From A Low and Quiet Sea, adapted for the stage from Ryan’s acclaimed Booker Prize-nominated novel of the same title.

Central to bringing the adaptation of the novel to the stage is another Nenagh native, Andrew Flynn, Director of Theatre at Galway Arts Centre and Artistic Director of Decadent.

From A Low and Quiet Sea is Ryan's fourth novel, a work long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2018. It portrays the individual and interlocking stories of three men: Farouk, a medical doctor and refugee from Syria; Lampy, a twenty-something nursing home bus driver and an accountant and shyster John, an older man who has lived a life he now regrets.

Ryan says that, for him, the novel is primarily a portrayal of men and manhood and the female characters featured very much exist merely to help bring the story together.

That, he says, was a conscious decision he made when writing the novel, but Flynn's stage adaptation weaves the female character of Florence centrally into the play and so it features, as the promotional blurb states, “four souls, each searching for something they have lost. Each trying to make sense of the road they have chosen.”

Ryan thinks that Flynn’s decision to weave a female in as one of the central characters in the play “is really well done” as a method of helping to “squeeze the story of the novel into two hours on stage.”

“So the fact that Florence is one of the main characters in the play is actually great, due to the way it's structured,” he asserts. “It's great the way it’s done. I can't wait to see it, to be honest.”

FINAL DRAFT

Ryan had just received the final draft of the play from Flynn when The Guardian spoke to the writer last Friday morning. He says he is very much looking forward to going along to see the production in Nenagh.

“I mean it’s great to see something come to life literally, to be given flesh,” he comments, adding that the task of staging a play based on the novel is very different from the task of writing the novel itself.

“So, it's out of my hands,” he adds, revealing that Flynn has actually consulted him along the way and confirming that he did attend a reading of the first draft in Longford back in the spring.

But Ryan's bottom line is that what audiences can expect to see in Nenagh in over three days of next week is a work that is solely created by Flynn and the cast. “It's not mine at all.”

This is not the first time that Flynn has drawn on Ryan's novels for theatre. Decadent Theatre Company also did a stage adaptation of his book, The Thing About December, in 2019. Ryan says he went to see that play in Galway - on two occasions - and was “completely enthralled”.

“I thought he [Flynn] did a fantastic job; it was incredible,” he says. “It was his own thing completely but still so true to the characters in the book. It was just a great experience.”

Because of that Ryan is now eagerly anticipating how this latest adaptation of A Low and Quiet Sea will go in Nenagh.

Will he be scanning the audience for people's reactions during the performance? “No, I get completely absorbed,” he replies. “When I went to see the stage adaptation of The Things About December I was enthralled. I am in awe of actors because they are so completely at the mercy of the moment and they have to inhabit their art in front of the audience. I can't imagine that, because when I'm writing a novel I can go into my office and lock the door and get it wrong over and over until I get it right. But when acting you have to get it right in the moment. It's amazing.”

IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

For Ryan, “theatre is just such a lovely absorbing, immersive experience” and he doesn't have time to be looking out for reactions in the audience. “I find it hard to move outside what's happening on the stage.”

Going to the theatre to see a play based on one of his own novels next week, he says, will make him “a happy and grateful audience member”.

“The thing is the novel is always going to be the novel and the play is a different thing, and no matter what happens its always going to be a separate entity. I can see the skill in acting and the serious craft of playwriting and these are different altogether from novel writing,” he says.

Meanwhile, yet another novel by Ryan will publish this August. He reveals that the The Queen of Dirt Island “is about four generations of women living in the same house in North Tipperary and all the things that go right and wrong for them”.

He describes the work as a kind of follow-up to his last book, Strange Flowers, yet says it is a novel that also stands on its own. He hopes to have a signing in The Nenagh Bookshhop in Pearse Street in the autumn.

A Low and Quiet Sea is directed by Andrew Flynn and the cast in order of appearance comprises: Aosaf Afzal, as Farouk; Darragh O’Toole, as Lampy; Maeve Fitzgerald, as Florence and Lorcan Cranitch as John.

TICKET DETAILS

Curtains up, 8pm; tickets: €18/€15 are available at Nenagh Arts Centre Box office 067 34400 or online at www.nenagharts.com.