Dredging truth from the trials of Colleen Bawn

by Rose Rushe

SOMETHING of the philosophical informed the media introduction of ‘The Colleen Bawn Trials’ by Joan Sheehy at Shannon Boat Club. Having launch honours, vice chair of City of Culture Tim O’Connor (ex The Gathering) invoked a conversation he had with pal Gabriel Byrne on what the actor termed “a tribal memory that drives connection”.
O’Connor congratulated director/ writer Sheehy “on her bringing to life things that happened in the past that are actually still with us” and “doing something really powerful here through Joan’s determination and imagination… It is ‘tribal memory’ by which the memory of Ellen Hanley (Coleleen Bawn) is still living”.
From West Limerick himself, he had a key into Joan Sheehy’s admitted fascination with and repulsion by the local stories of Hanley and John Scanlon, her murdering lover, that circulated in Glin where she went to school.
What Sheehy calls “an assembly of facts, weaving fact and fiction” will shape her drama ‘The Colleen Bawn Trials’ taking place outside and inside Shannon Boat Club, Sarsfield Bridge from August 14 to 23, 8.30pm in the gloaming.
She credits collaborators John Greenwood on soundscape, Anne-Marie Morrin on costume and visuals, Art O’Laoire on film (elements of the 1911 original) with devising the script that excludes a flesh and blood Colleen.

“We will begin outside the building and then move upstairs for 25 minutes of the actual trial,” she says, gesturing lockside at Sarsfield Bridge: “The audience loves that, discovering a building and discovering theatre like that”.
She has ace experience in such staging, having used Georgian House, Daghdha Space, Kate O’Brien’s home to resonant effect with past plays, original or revivals, in Limerick alone.

Memorable work as an actress include her role in ‘Translations’ by Island Theatre Company as delicate, dedicated wife Grace to Barry McGovern’s Frank Hardy. Joan Sheehy has a wide span carved on a national platform also.

Back to hauling Ellen Hanly back from her seaweed-laced bed. Indeed, a mariner’s rope dating to 1850 from Morrin’s farm and the sound of creaking hulls by way of Greenood’s steel bow will raise hackles and hopefully, the dead.
Professional actors Shane Whisker (Scanlon), Pat Ryan, Malcolm Adams as defence lawyer Daniel O’Connell and Gene Rooney as Ellen Walsh “who gave hugely important evidence. Remember Ellen’s body was in the water for seven weeks” play out this celebrity trial.
It then clambers up another flight to the Evidence Rooms.
More anon of this artistic “haunting, is what I hope”. Book on 061-525031.