In Conversation with Pat Nolan...

Pat Nolan & Ann Russell in Risk Everything

"The characters are fascinating. The characters grow on you, so to speak, and you do get to know them, and they all have their troubles, and then they have this bigger trouble and it's like 'my God', everyone's drowning and they're hanging on to each other. And it was also an Irish premiere." Pat Nolan is talking to me about Canadian writer George F Walker's Risk Everything, that received it's first Irish performance in The New Theatre last year, and was extremely well received and it is about to have another run, this time in The Viking Theatre. Nolan, known to many as school teacher Barry O'Hanlon from Fair City, has taken time out of his busy schedule to have a chat with me about the play, his preparations for The Wake in the Abbey, and all other things theatre. 

It was the concept of Risk Everything that Nolan liked, the dark side, a counter to the years of Barry in the long running soap, as well as being a work performed for Irish audiences for the first time. "It's always nice to present new work, be it outside of Ireland or inside of Ireland." This time round it is in a new venue, something that isn't always as straight forward as it sounds. "There are certain reblocking issues. It's not a carbon copy of the last production... it's like being on tour. You go to some theatres that are football fields and you have a postage stamp of a set, or else you have the postage stamp of a stage and then this huge set that you have to adapt." 

The madcap comedy of the play is what Nolan really enjoys, alongside the interesting characters. "They keep the audience enthralled. You invest in these characters, you engage with them, and then all this stuff starts to happen...and they're not saints, they all have interesting and colourful pasts, you know, or even presents, but you do root for them." This is helped by a very strong cast coupled with great comedy writing, as well as a storyline that is certainly not run of the mill.

Nolan likes playing different characters, something he has always tried to do throughout his career. "At the moment I'm also rehearsing The Wake, I'm playing Father Billy in that, a priest." Quite a difference from his character in Risk Everything, who is a porn director, but highlighting the point of mixing things up a bit when possible. Rehearsals are at an early stage, finding their way through the play, and the layers involved in Tom Murphy's writing. As Nolan talks you get a sense that this exploration aspect is something he enjoys and finds revealing. Long rehearsals are something he enjoyed from his Focus days, and the issue with cost cutting today is that the length of rehearsal time can get cut. 

"For an actor it's a big lifeline to have rehearsals, you know....it's a great luxury to have. And you can explore, and you can try out, and you can go down blind alleys, and find whatever you think is the right path, but you do have that time." This longer time allows consideration of the play, the language and the time it is set in. "And in a way the play [The Wake] is forecasting, foreseeing The Celtic Tiger, it's that thing of how we just lost the head during The Celtic Tiger, and in the play this family, The O'Tooles, kind of lose the head in a small way ... the greed of property, the greed of owning things, that's all explored, way ahead of its time in some ways."

Nolan has always been a believer of encouraging new Irish writing, something his own company, Black Box, was dedicated to. "I think that belief came from The Focus, because they would have a one act season every year, and you'd be working on plays, meeting writers, and it was great, going through the plays, analysing them, researching them, doing Stanislavski exercises to try to get into the characters and storylines, character studies, all that kind of stuff. So it was very in-depth kind of work, but it was very exciting because it was new. I've taken part in many a premiere of an Irish play and that's exciting to be part of that, the birth of a play." Nolan simply talking about it feels exciting, and as he puts it, seeing a playwright starting out on their journey that goes on to a larger career is something else that is exciting. 

The Focus had a profound effect on him, giving him an appreciation of learning, acting, the skill and craft involved. "The Focus was very accessible, which was very good you know. I think it was £3 a class, something like that. The classes started at half two and they could go on until about half ten. On a good night, Deirdre, or Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy, they'd just keep going until the work was done, a very exciting time, you know. Sometimes you'd have to get out early because there was a show on that night. You'd be kicked out at half six or something like that."

Nolan started acting when he was seventeen. "I was a telegram boy. I worked in the Post Office. And my local youth club in Inchicore, who I used to play football for, I was a member of the club down there, they had a drama section and there were some nice girls in it and that's all she wrote really. It was downhill after that." He laughs and continues: "You know when you're seventeen, there's that kind of buzz to it. I was getting into David Bowie at the time, and there was all that kind of stuff going on, and, you know, it was cold and it rained and I felt like an actor. There was no tradition of it in the family per say, sometimes I'd be sneaking out to drama class, and wouldn't tell my workmates I was acting, in case they slagged me or something. I was a closet actor for many years... and when I was in the youth club, it was so funny, they were always talking about this guy who 'is in the Abbey like, Bryan Murray'. And it was great when we finally shared a dressing room in Fair City... they always spoke very highly of him." 

Before leaving the Post Office, Nolan got a chance to go to Vienna. "I'd been there in 1980 with the Dublin Youth Theatre for a youth festival," a group he says later, that he has a lot of time for, "and then I went over there for a year. I just wanted to put myself in the situation and see if this was a whim or can I do this seven days a week. You'd make the coffee, you'd serve the coffee, you'd take in the coats, you'd make the sets, you play on stage, you do the lights, you do the sound. Seven days a week in rep - Monday, Tuesday you'd do a show, Wednesday you'd do the light on another show, so you'd be jumping around. I did that for a year, and felt at the end of that I could do it. When I came back then I got a part in The Abbey as one of the extras with a few lines in the Hamlet production directed by Michael Bodanna and it starred Stephen Brennan. And then I also got a part in The Peacock in the lunchtime, while doing the Postman at the same time."

It was clear that the acting life was calling and Nolan gave up the Post Office fully and hasn't looked back since. "When I went back into the Abbey last year for Oedipus, it had been, I think, thirty-two years since I'd been in there. Took me a while. But twenty-two of those years I'd been in Fair City." He's heading back there again, so the gap isn't quite as long this time. Of course he is going via The Viking Theatre, and in a way maybe 'risk everything' has a different meaning in his case. 

As for acting itself, it is clear Nolan loves it, his passion for it is on display, something he brings to his teaching, after gaining an MA from Maynooth, in The Gaiety School and out in Sallynoggin College. When I throw the question about his love of acting, as the tables are being vacated by the lunch goers, he gives his answer: "Yeah, I do like performing, I like the challenge of it, I like the camaraderie of it." If the words had been missed, Nolan's expression would have shown the answer anyway.