John O’Donnell introduces his new radio play Horace, which kicks off the new season of Drama On One on RTÉ Radio 1 this October.
Fortune-tellers, mediums, psychics: do they really have a connection with the spirit world, or are they charlatans exploiting the vulnerabilities of others? I had been inclined to dismiss them as chancers.
However, when I read Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, a wickedly funny novel about a troubled psychic, I changed my mind. Maybe it’s not just their customers who feel depressed or unloved; maybe there’s no such thing as a happy medium.
I started to explore the insecurities and desires of spiritualists and crystal-gazers. Some were – and are – tatty remnants of the vaudeville age, end-of-the-pier performers at the end of an era. But others do what they do not simply to make money, but to feel needed; to please. Where, I wondered, would a lonely clairvoyant go if she wanted to feel appreciated and loved? A bereavement therapy counselling session seemed the obvious place: and so, we first meet Fidelma, the main character in Horace, among her new 'friends' in the Grief Encounter group..
Horace is the teddy-bear Fidelma brings with her, a theatrical prop designed to endear her to strangers, to win hearts and unsuspecting minds.
For a play about hearing voices, radio seems a particularly appropriate format; the perfect medium, you might say.
But is Fidelma even a clairvoyant at all? As she says, the word means 'clear seeing,' and that is what Fidelma does; she looks closely, and she notices things. (Which is what writers do: Richard Ford says the writer’s job is to pay attention). And it’s what she does with what she learns that draws us in. Originally a short story in my collection Mr Hoo and Other Stories (Doire Press), with the help of RTÉ Drama on One’s Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Brew, and the patient assistance of the award-winning director Gorretti Slavin, I reimagined the piece as a play for radio. The wonderful cast includes Dawn Bradfield, Aoibhinn McGinnity, Mark Huberman, Charlie McGuinness, Stephen Jones, and Enda Oates, expertly directed by Gorretti with musical arrangement by Brian Wynne and sound design by Mark Dwyer
Is Fidelma a misguided nuisance, or irredeemably evil? You’ll have to listen to the play and decide for yourself. But in earlier times a woman like Fidelma might have been condemned as a witch. The cartoon image of pointy hats and cats and spells may have evaporated, but in some places suspicions remain. The last prosecution in Britain under the 1735 Witchcraft Act was only eighty years ago. (Fidelma’s surname, Dunmore, is a nod to ‘The Dunmore Witch’, Alice Kyteler, the first woman charged with witchcraft in Ireland in 1324). Fidelma’s loneliness is at the dark heart of Horace, as is the sometimes desperate need of the bereaved to make contact with a lost loved one; though there are, I hope, moments of black humour also. And for a play about hearing voices, radio seems a particularly appropriate format; the perfect medium, you might say.
Horace will be broadcast at 8.00pm on Sunday 4th October on RTE Radio 1 - the first of Drama On One’s autumn season of new work. Listen to more from Drama On One here.
