‘It’s the cure and the cause’
Tadhg Hickey is walking through his beloved Cork city on the way to rehearsals when he answers the phone.
It’s a fitting backdrop for a chat with one of Leeside’s most exciting creatives considering the massive role his home town has played in his art, his recovery, and his ever-evolving outlook on life.
Rehearsals are at The Everyman for Hickey’s new one-man-show ‘GATMAN!’ which previews tonight, Thursday, and tomorrow night, before having its official premiere on Saturday night.
The new play follows Hickey’s highly acclaimed ‘In One Eye, Out the Other’ which first did the rounds in 2019.
Where ‘In One Eye, Out the Other’ was an intentionally contained and compact production, ‘GATMAN!’, though still drawing from the same well of inspiration around alcoholism and mental health, is a much larger endeavour.
“This is the complete opposite because it's a big production, it's a production like I've never done really before in theatre, particularly on my own,” explains Hickey.
“From designers, lighting people, projection, music, it's a full-scale production. I'm inhabiting characters in a way that I didn't do in the previous show. The previous show was more about telling the story of the characters, whereas in this one, I'm actually kind of inhabiting them.”
Hickey’s previous outing was born from quite a dark stand-up routine that he says wasn’t quite landing as he wanted, so he figured it might work as a theatre show. He was right. ‘In One Eye, Out the Other’ was very well received, bagging more nominations than any other show at Dublin Fringe Festival 2019.
Described by Hickey as “a love letter to drink”, his latest production, directed by The Everyman’s Artistic Director Sophie Motley, retains his signature dark humour as it presents two contrasting but interdependent narratives. We spend a day with Murph as he wanders the streets of Cork desperately attempting to sober up before a supervised visit with his little boy. Murph’s story is interwoven with the adventures of Gatman, a superhero who acquires extraordinary powers when fuelled by gat (booze). Gatman’s mission: to save his beloved, boozy Corkopia from the sobering shackles of Father Mathew, the temperance teetotaling priest statue that has come to life.
For Hickey, the idea of suddenly gaining superpowers is the perfect analogy when it comes to trying to describe the seductive and controlling power of alcohol addiction to somebody who hasn’t experienced it.
He says: “When I was drinking, and then when I came out of it, I felt even more sure that that was the best way to explain to someone that would have no understanding of alcoholism. You're not looking for an excuse for your behaviour, that's not the point of recovery at all, but it's just so that the average person has some kind of sense that there is something going on with your level of control; it's not quite your own anymore, there's an illness or a sickness there.
“I felt like people who were drinking with me when I was 15, they were having a laugh, like 'this is brilliant, this is great craic', but very early on I felt like I don't just want this, I need this.
“It was much more than a want; I'd found this way of not just managing life, but making it brilliant, so I can't go without it. That's definitely in my mind from my teenage years but that didn't seem to be going on for my peers.”
As is the case for many artists, and drinkers for that matter, the city or town in which those early memories are made can often become a leading character in any resulting stories told. Hickey says Cork “in all its hideous beauty and magnificence” is certainly a leading character in ‘GATMAN!’.
“Cork for me is a lead character because in my own drinking story, I never went anywhere, like, I would be about to go to Electric Picnic and I'd go drinking in a gaff on Shandon Street instead, that's the type of drinker I was,” recalls Hickey.
“Looking back on it, I was very happy to try and feel that I was king of my very, very, very small domain.
“There's times when the city feels like it's alluring and it's a kind of participant in the debauchery with you, not just a backdrop but right there in it. Then there's other times when it feels like the city's out to get you. It's the cure and the cause.
“I think there's a moment in an Enda Walsh play where one of the characters is going round a roundabout and he's trying to leave Cork, but he keeps going back.
“I think as my recovery has progressed, I've stopped either blaming it or praising it for its role in wherever my life is. Cork was either aiding or destroying my dreams. I don't feel like that anymore, I just feel like it happens to be the place where I'm from and I love the city for all its hideous beauty.”
Tickets are available for the three-night run of ‘GATMAN!’ from everymancork.com. The show starts at 8pm each night. Tickets are €25 plus €2.50 booking fee. Age recommendation is 16 and over.