Fathers and sons

It’s possible that Adrian Dunbar was never as artistically inspired as he is currently is directing Philadelphia Here I Come.
And that includes those days when Dunbar was appearing on stage in the West End, filming his first co-written movie Hear My Song or more recently appearing in one of the Star Wars movies. It even includes those days when Dunbar was a "working musician" playing bass for Elvis sound-alike Frank Chisum’s band!

Certainly when I spoke by phone to Dunbar in Derry, he was gleeful at the fact that the author of the play, Brian Friel, had turned up at a preview and praised the production "enormously". And one friend of Adrian’s, "who’s seen twelve production's of this Irish theatrical masterpiece" claimed Dunbar and his cast "brought something new to every scene."
Adrian Dunbar says he abosolutely relates to this play because it mirrors tensions that existed between himself and his late father. Indeed, he feels it mirrors the realtionship between the majority of Irish fathers and sons, who refuse to, or can’t, communicate with their sons. "That is what this play is all about," he says.
‘My research into this is huge. "This breakdown in communication between fathers and sons, according to Wittgenstein, probably started during the Industrial Revolution. At the time the relationship between the daughter and the mother was maintained because they allowed the girls to come into the mills with their mothers, or whatever, but the father basically disappeared out of family life for every working day of the week. So this huge guy – the biggest thing in your life when you are, say, four – would leave the house before you got up and in the evening he’d come back after being in the mine, the foundry, and he’d be wrecked. And you’d be scared, you wouldn’t be able to go near him. "So you’d be saying, 'Where does my father go that he comes back so fucking wrecked' but you never asked. All you’d be told was ‘Your father has to go to work.’ Whereas before that, boys followed their fathers into the fields or worked with them at the forge and had a sustained relationship. So this while breakdown is at the centre of Brian’s play."
Adrian’s dad was a carpenter and, perhaps as a result of a work situation similar to the one Dunbar describes, never once "really talked" with his son. The same is true of the father-son relationship in Philadelphia Here I Come.
"The father in this play says nothing whereas all the people around him say what they think is going on in his head," Adrian explains. ‘But the son is going, ‘He’s not speaking to me.’ They say, 'Ah, but he didn’t speak to anyone when your mother died either.’ And women support this notion of the ‘strong, silent type’ like there’s loads going on inside. In this play the women certainly support his silence and say to the son, ‘don’t worry, he will say something to you’. Or ‘Just because he doesn’t say anything to you, doesn’t mean he hasn’t got feelings!’ But the son just says, ‘I don’t know if my father has feelings because we’ve, literally, not had a conversation.’ "
Clearly Adrian Dunbar can relate to that!
‘Of course I can. Just like I relate to the fact that the boy says, ‘if he’d say one thing to me, just one thing to me, I mightn’t go, I might stay here with him.’
So does this particular father speak to the son? "There are pages and pages of talk about cans and bottles and things they bought for the shop and how the tyre needs to be changed on the lorry but nothing, of worth is really being said at all." Until the son makes one last try to communicate with his father. Then, what happens? Well, why not go see for yourself.

Philadelphia Here I Come runs at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre from Februauary 16th – 21st