'It's a real privilege to do the show in Mullingar'

Valley of the Squinting Windows star has strong family connections to Mullingar

Ciara O'Callaghan plays Nan Brennan in Michael Scott’s acclaimed play The Valley of the Squinting Windows, which is based on the once banned book by Delvin native Brinsley MacNamara.

The former Fair City and Harry Wild actress, first played the role of Nan last year, when the production sold out in Mullingar Arts Centre and The Gaiety Theatre.

Her character Nan is central to the plot of the play and the source novel. As a young woman, she had a relationship with a wealthy local man, Henry Shannon. She became pregnant but Shannon refused to marry her. She suffered what she thought was a miscarriage and was told that the remains of the baby was buried at the bottom of the garden. She emigrated to England and married Ned Brennan. The couple later move back to Garradrimna, where the villagers rejoice in telling Ned about his wife’s past.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner's Rodney Farry, Ciara revealed that performing in the Mullingar Arts Centre is a homecoming of sorts for her.

Nan Brennan is a complex character, to put it mildly.

Complex is a good way of putting it. She has a lot going on. She went through her own heartache as a young woman.

When we find her in the play, she’s the mother of John and just determined that he will be a priest, because I think she feels it will give her the respect and the value that she doesn’t have because of her past. She is very bitter. When the character of Rebecca becomes pregnant, Nan relishes that and is as bad as all the other gossips and sees it as a scandal.

It’s almost like she’s forgotten what she went through herself as a young girl and has learned nothing.

For me, I have to play her as truthfully as possible. She has had a tough life. The man she has married is now an alcoholic and he beats her. She’s gossiped about in the town.

Her pride and joy is John. Everything she does, all the hours she works are for him. She saves everything in order for him to be able to study to be a priest in England. She’s also trying to protect him from the valley.

It’s important for me as an actor to find the light and shade and not play her just as a nasty lady. I’d like to think that there’s empathy with the character and people see her good side as well as her flaws.

Her story is the story of many Irish women in decades gone by, isn’t it?

It is, unfortunately, and it’s not that long ago. It’s a important story to tell. I think that’s why the audiences are flocking to it, certainly in Mullingar and in Dublin last year, not only because they know the story of the original book, they also know the story because it’s fresh and relevant in Irish society. I mean, it is changing, but there’s still some change to go. It also really highlights the power of the Catholic Church of the day.

Were you aware of the book and the scandal it caused in Westmeath when it was first published?

I had heard of Brindsley McNamara and I knew he’d written this book, but I hadn’t read it. It was banned [in 1918] and you couldn’t get it for so long. I read it before we started rehearsals last year. I mean, the man [McNamara] was run out of town and his father lost his job as a schoolteacher, I believe.

Irish society was so conservative when it was published it’s not hard to see why it was banned. It really is a Greek tragedy set in a small town and it’s pretty full-on.

Greek tragedy is a good way of putting it and that’s very much how we’re treating it as a production. There’s a lot of melodrama and there’s no winners in this show.

We interviewed the play’s director Michael Scott before its premier in Mullingar Arts Centre in 2019. He expressed the view that in the digital age, we are perhaps just as likely to judge people and gossip on social media as people did in the 1910s.

I think this production really highlights that. We have the traditional costume and sets, but then on the main stage, we’ve also got the camerawoman filming the whole thing, so everything’s going digitally, being blasted up on the back of the wall of the theatre. It’s to give that whole idea of we’re being watched all the time. Everybody’s watching everybody, including the audience.

The audience are watching us, but they’re also being watched on camera. Everybody’s watching everybody, and I think that’s what Michael was trying to achieve with that, and I think he has done it. People loved that element of it last year.

How are rehearsals going?

They’re good. I mean, we’re only on week one now, so today is day four. It’s early days yet, and we have some new cast members so it’s like rehearsing a new show in many ways,

We have a new actor playing my son John, Conall Curran, he’s just graduated from the Lir School of Acting. We have Jean Rooney playing Mrs Brannigan, lots of new people, it’s exciting.

The cast is a mixture of professional actors, such as yourself, and community actors from Mullingar. How has that been?

Getting to work with the actors in Mullingar has been a real treat, they really add to the show. It’s enjoyable. I think that’s why so many of us are back doing it again.

I’m particularly fond of performing in Mullingar because my mother’s a Mullingar woman. My grandad was the railway master in the town.

She was there and very proud last year at the opening night and had brought friends and my auntie and uncle. That was lovely and my mother [Mary O’Callaghan, née Delamere] remembers going to dances in what’s now the Mullingar Arts Centre. For me personally, it’s a real privilege to be able to do the show in Mullingar.