Outsider looking in

Sometimes a play can crystallise in a very specific moment. And even though Jim O’Hanlon says his new one, The Buddhist Of Castleknock, isn’t autobiographical he did recently marry a South African and when he and his new bride sip a brew in their local bar he soon becomes aware of the “homogeneity” of Irish culture and how certain people can be made to feel like outsiders. O’Hanlon’s play deals with the subject of a young man who marries a black woman and brings her back home to Castleknock. He is best known as a writer of British TV shows such as Bad Girls, Casualty and Coronation Street.

“What happened in our case, when we got to the local pub is that I would be totally aware of how homogenous our cultural references are, our shared history and our stories,” he says. “And the assumption we make about people who are with us, such as ‘everyone knows about what happened in the Civil War’ and so on. So I sit there with an insider’s view and an outsider’s view. And that does come through in The Buddhist Of Castleknock.”

Which is about what, exactly?

“It’s set in a middle-class, Irish family at Christmas and it’s about a young fella who comes home from London for Christmas and brings his new partner with him, who just happens to be black,” he resumes. “And this family is very proud of themselves, in terms of how liberal they are and how they don’t bat an eyelid at this and they’re all very self-congratulatory about their open-mindedness. But then the son announces he won’t be going to midnight mass because he’s become a Buddhist and, progressively, all hell breaks loose!”

Sounds like Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, turned on its ass!

“With more of a cutting edge, I hope!”

What is Jim hoping to call into question with this play?

“It’s about a country trying to deal with cultural changes in a broader sense,” he responds. “About a country facing new cultures, new languages, new religions and people who don’t have all those shared beliefs and that shared history I talked about earlier. But I think this whole, new, multi-cultural mix is healthy. As long as it’s not, overall, American McDonald’s culture. People wearing baseball caps back to front is hardly a sign of cultural progress. Though we do have, in the play, a 16-year-old rapper who is looking in a different way at cultural diversity in Ireland these days.”

More to the point Jim O’Hanlon says, “We really do need to look, again, at the assumption behind the line: ‘We live in the best possible country, in the best possible world’.” This is naive, he believes.

“We’re great with foreigners as long as they are German and Dutch and wear Aran jumpers and play the bodhran and drink Guinness” he says, omitting, the most important prerequisite, “and they’re going home!”

“Absolutely,” he agrees, laughing.” And they’re not buying land! Or are only here for The Rose Of Tralee! But by setting this in a single family where an outsider comes into their landscape I bring all that into focus. She doesn’t want to sing ‘Away In A Manger’ at midnight mass and nor does the son. So what this family has to do is make adjustments to accommodate these new cultural realities. This family has to do it. And we all do