On The Horns Of A Dilemma

“Drink yourself up to where possibility feels infinite and your immortality feels strong.” So says one of the characters in Conor McPherson’s latest play, The Seafarer.
Liam Carney, who performs the leading role, believes the line is central to the play, which concerns friends who gather one Christmas Eve in a house in Baldoyle to get drunk and play cards. Things take a turn for the fantastical, however, with the arrival of a stranger, who seems to be playing for the soul of Carney’s character, Sharkey.

“The stranger reminds Sharkey they met 25 years before when they made this appointment,” Carney explains. “So this stranger, who's the Devil, tells Sharkey: ‘When I win this game of cards you come with me.’ And hell is described to him as the lack of love, the loneliness.”
Sharkey, who has been drunk for most of his adult life, claims to remember nothing of this.
“But he doesn’t have an out, apart from this game of cards.”
What’s especially creepy, says Carney, is how normal Satan seems. “This is no devil with horns, if you know what I mean. There is no way for the audience to know this is the devil apart from the pain he makes Sharkey feel during that card game.”
Liam agrees with the sentiment expressed by Sean O’Casey who once said that the Irish often try to replace the loss of their sense of a spiritual life by over-indulging in alcohol.
“And that’s what The Seafarer is all about, I guess,” he summises. “Because so many people who drink too much, or take too many drugs are trying to block out pain, or substitute drink for a lack of love, lack of a religious faith, something deeper to believe in.”
Not, he stresses, that The Seafarer is all doom and gloom.
“Even though it deals with a dark night of the soul there is a tincture of light in the end. It’s not going to make people go out and commit suicide afterwards! In fact, it’s fucking hilarious because the more serious and dark we get in the play, the funnier it is. Then again, as Irish we also tend to laugh at the Devil too, don’t we? And all of this is what makes The Seafarer so good to be working in, so great as a play.”

The Seafarer is currently running at the Abbey, Dublin