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THe is referring to Séamas O’Reilly’s famous book and how the Hollywood actor flew to Derry to watch a new film about the Troubles called Dead City, then mysteriously disappeared. But his real interest lies in what happens when a place is defined by a certain historical moment, to the extent that the stories told end up in an image. As someone says about the TV series: “A young man in a violent time, will he get caught up in everything or find another way through blah blah blah.”
O’Reilly is determined to show us that the people of Derry are not to be taken lightly. He uses Dead City as a starting point around the various people involved in the series, from the scriptwriter to a local historian who wonders, “How do you talk about the past when someone is still alive, in a place that hasn’t survived?” As we go through the book, we find links between them, creating a picture of the city, similar to the one in Tommy Orange’s book. There, there used music to explore the lives of Native Americans.
Each person speaks directly to us. “The whole place has gone crazy with the arrival of Hollywood,” says Dympna: people hope it will boost the economy “like the Throne did Belfast”. Dympna’s daughter wants to do some research and asks her about the 1970s, “like someone from the UN on a fact-finding mission”, as Dympna remembers the things she hid from her children. “I asked myself then, if awareness is possible to be like you can’t tell the whole story.”
Who tells the story and why they say it’s a big deal, though O’Reilly’s touch means it doesn’t seem like it’s over yet. He has an eye for the absurd, because of the way tragedy becomes commercial: the artist who painted the murals on the walls of the Bogside is now doing educational tours with “mustache and cross earrings like plastic Provo”; a former IRA fighter who offers his services as a “consultant”. Those who have been arrested by the code of silence are more than happy to demonstrate how to make a bottle bomb. Another person said: “Don’t say anything.”
Economic importance means that people take jobs that promote cliches. Local artists are hired to recreate an old set for the film. “I can do a gunman, you can start with a pigeon,” says one. “If I do another pigeon for the rest of my life, God help me.” Aspiring actor Turlough says: “This is the only chance I have to get out of here.”
Locals know that it is mainly Americans and Brits who are working on the series: Americans who take their Irish links – one of the comments about the missing star is that “he has gone like the Yanks’ property” – and Brits who “treat their violence as hiccups, something crazy and scary that happens for unknown reasons”. But there’s also Eileen, who hopes her house will be used as a film studio so she can pay extra, watching the crew inspect her decorations as if they were “drawings drawn from the yard”.
These past fun and games are boring. The book is driven by the various ways in which the dead cannot escape. Ann-Marie’s son was shot dead by a British soldier, his picture is now constantly reprinted on book covers and “bloody tea towels”. With her cold anger and clear expression of the inexorable contradictions of grief – “My heart is thin and dry, blown to the wind like beach chairs” – Ann-Marie is one of the most powerful voices in the book. Thinking about the boys who returned safely after his son was killed, he said: “It was their fault and I will not forgive them.”
O’Reilly’s first book, Heard Mother Dies?it was a funny joke about his mother’s death, and he clearly has a rare gift for moving confidently between critics. The Prestige Comedy Series has a clever tool: it allows O’Reilly to follow the stories we’re always looking around for. And his language is very clear: a disabled person wakes up “slowly, like dog food coming out of a tin”.
Some may think that a rare actor’s thread should be very popular, but Prestige Drama is very popular with the average person who plays on television. James Plunkett, author of the 1969 book Strumpet City, another book about an Irish city, best described what his book did when he said that “I never lifted my eye away from the people, never lifted my eye away from the parish…
