5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
New play tells tale of transatlantic cable that put Kerry at centre of the world
Describing himself as a London-Ballinskelligs man, actor Mike Kelly has written a play about a seismic event on Valentia Island, off the west coast of Kerry, which took place in 1866. Known as the 'eighth wonder of the world,' the laying of the transatlantic cable from the island to Heart's Content in Newfoundland spanning 3,000km, revolutionised global communications by reducing the transmission time of messages across continents from weeks to mere minutes.
Aidan Dooley, who wrote and performed the award-winning Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer, has come on board to direct the play in a new telling, co-produced by Siamsa Tíre.
Kelly, who grew up in London and spent idyllic childhood holidays in Ballinskelligs where both his parents were from, began to think about the timing of the cable installation. It was relatively close to the famine. Emigration was rife.
'What really got my creative juices going was how the historical event might have felt for a local family at the time,' says Kelly.
His play centres around a fictional family, the O'Sullivans. They have waved 'goodbye' to their daughter, Kitty and are waiting desperately to hear from her in her new base in New York. A precious letter could take weeks or months to arrive. When the play opens, Kitty has emigrated six months previously.
'On the O'Sullivans' doorstep, a world-changing thing is about to happen. Their son, Micheál works at the cable station. So the parents are hoping that Micheál's presence at the station may help them to get some sort of word to New York. Into the mix is an English character, Bartholomew, also working at the cable station. He throws up some plot twists.'
Kelly has also written about the relationships between the Irish and the wealthy people from America and England who arrived on Valentia Island for the launch of the cable. 'These people are going around dressed up in the best of everything. They are in stark contrast with the lives the islanders were living. On the one hand, there is huge hope and excitement at something almost incomprehensible. On the other hand, there is some resentment as well which I explore in the play.'
The Valentia Island cable station. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive
The resentment emerges when it transpires that using the cable to send a telegram across the ocean would have been prohibitively expensive for the islanders. 'A fairly big part of the plot is whether the people can use the cable or not.'
Kelly says he has taken artistic licence regarding how the famine affected the Valentia Islanders. 'Relatively speaking, the islanders would have fared better than others on dry land, but in the context of my story, the Famine is a huge backdrop with a lot of emigration.'
Also, Kelly's tragic experience of loss informs his play. 'Unbelievably, I lost my brother [in a road accident in 2014] and my sister [to cancer in 2016] in the space of a year and a half. We were very close as siblings so it was very traumatic. The pain and devastation it had on my mother feeds into the play. There are specific references in the play that are taken from what mum and I went through at the time. I suppose there's a degree of healing there as well. But some of the raw pain is in the play.'
Kelly's mother is the inspiration behind Mairead O'Sullivan, the central mother character in the play. 'The character has my mother's feistiness and humour. My mother is in a hospital bed now as she has been immobile since having a stroke. But she has the nursing staff in Valentia Care Home doubled over with laughter most days. She's an extraordinary woman.'
Kelly, who lives in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire regularly visits his mother and is always delighted to inhale the Kerry air. He hopes to end his days somewhere in the Kingdom.
Since graduating from LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) in 1997, Kelly has been working as a professional actor. He had a cameo part in the Ridley Scott movie, The Martian, starring Matt Damon.
Kelly was based in Budapest for a long time. He was involved in a three-man theatre company there. 'We did a whole range of plays. A huge amount of US and UK film productions and theatre happen there because of the studios there and all sorts of locations.'
The timing of The Cable fits in with the Valentia Island cable celebrations. There will be an exhibition in the lobby of Siamsa Tíre in Tralee featuring photographs and an actual part of the cable itself, as well as live music.
The Cable will be performed at Siamsa Tíre, Tralee, from July 17-20.
