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THEY SAY YOU can make art out of anything – but making a comedy out of the true-life story about a monk who hijacked an Irish plane in order to find out the third secret of Fatima?
Well… that must have been a challenge.
But it’s all in a day’s work for actress/writer/director Janet Moran, who has crafted a funny and thoughtful play out of the true-life story that captivated Ireland in 1981. In April of that year, Aer Lingus flight 164 from Dublin to London was diverted to France after being hijacked by an Australian former monk named Larry Downey.
Flight EI 164 was about five minutes from Heathrow airport when passenger Downey, a 55-year-old Australian, is said to have gone into the cabin toilet, doused himself with petrol and headed to the cockpit holding a lighter and making threats so he could be taken to Iran.
He was told the plane didn’t have the fuel to get to Tehran, so he settled for France.
The future Taoiseach and then-Irish Transport Minister Albert Reynolds flew to France to handle the situation, given it was an Irish plane in the spotlight.
A few years ago, Moran tells TheJournal.ie, she was watching Reeling in the Years when she saw footage of Reynolds trying to sort out the hjiacking. A seed was planted – wouldn’t it make a great play?
“I just couldn’t believe it – when you think of a hjacking, your mind goes to the most terrible things,” says Moran. “But the footage shows the passengers celebrating with their rescuers.”
She was particular taken by the moment Reynolds is asked about what exactly is the third secret of Fatima, and his response: “It’s a secret. Nobody knows.”
“So I just thought it was kind of glorious and it was a kind of madcap story and thankfully nobody was hurt – [Downey] didn’t actually have a weapon,” says Moran. “It was a great way to look at Ireland then and now, how our relationship with faith has changed since then. It seems apt that an Irish hijacking would have a religious angle.”
Ireland was a more insular place in 1981, says Moran – “that has thankfully changed for the better since then”.
Moral guide
She was also interested in exploring what such an extreme event might do to people.
“One thing [that interested me] was that in absence of that moral guide, what should we be looking to as a guide for living? And I also think in a situation like that, in a hijacking or extreme situation, I think people often reach for the people they love; they bring out the best in themselves. That perspective in life can bring out the best in people. And that was interesting, when the chips were down what is important? And to me it’s the people you love, the people around you.”
The play takes the audience through the plane’s journey, with Moran focusing on a number of different imagined characters that all show a different part of Irish society.
“There are two elderly sisters, based on my own granny and her sister. You have a young couple who are sexually inexperienced and nervous going on honeymoon – that would have been more prevalent in 1981. You have a businessman who is a bit OTT and prefigures the Celtic Tiger.”
The play was written while she was on a residency at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, while five and a half months pregnant. After she had her baby, she left the play for a while, but then returned to it later.
It opened in 2018, then went to Edinburgh last August, and the reception has been so good that it’s now about to go on an Irish tour. “It got great reviews so we were so lucky – the reaction has been so good,” says Moran, adding that they only had to tailor a few of the jokes for the Edinburgh audience.
Indeed, The List called the play “Gloriously comic and unexpectedly thoughtful …it carries you off to places you didn’t think it would go”, while the Edinburgh Reporter said: “This is a very funny script that really really entertained the audience who lapped up this original piece of work.”
Research
Some of the audience at each show goes in not realising the event really happened, until real-life footage is shown 45 minutes in.
“Someone said to me the other day: if you made it up you wouldn’t believe it,” says Moran. She was very lucky that a friend of hers, who is 101, has a son who was on board the hijacked plane.
“I was able to interview his son early on – that was terrific. He is a funny and wry man.”
She also watched the Scannal documentary and a documentary called The Holy Hijacker about the incident. “The Scannal documentary was the first time I really got a sense of how terrifying the situation was for passengers,” says Moran. She says that when it comes to finding the humour in it: “I think if you play everything truthfully it’s funny, if you play everything truthfully you find the pathos as well. I don’t have to make the absurd bits absurd – they are absurd.”
Moran is known for her theatre work in shows including Ulysses, The Plough & The Stars, Juno and the Paycock (National Theatre, London/Abbey Theatre co-production), Shibari, Translations, and film and television work including Love/Hate, Dublin Oldschool, Breakfast on Pluto and Quirke (BBC).
In 2015, she was one of the actors who took to the stage at the inaugural Waking the Feminists event at the Abbey Theatre. The event called for gender equality across Irish theatre. Has she seen changes take place since?
“I actually think it’s made a huge difference,” she says, praising its grassroots accomplishments. “Personally for me I definitely felt that if people are going to make space you need to step up and try something, not sit in the background and say ‘I couldn’t do that’. Part of it is being older and having more confidence. I definitely hadn’t thought it was possible before and Waking the Feminists made me think [change] was.”
“I think it’s not just the women themselves who were woken, obviously,” adds Moran, describing how Screen Ireland is among the organisations that implemented gender equality programmes as a result.
“I think the checks and balances are there and people in power, like on boards, are conscious of how it’s up to them to make sure targets are met.”
As an actor for more than 20 years, Moran enjoys having introduced the directing and writing side to her work. This is the second play she has directed. “It’s really nice to be constantly challenging yourself, so it’s been really exciting to me after 20 years of acting to have a show I’ve written on.”
But you’re probably asking – how did the hijacking end? Well, let’s just say that it involved the French special forces, a 10-hour stand-off, and Albert Reynolds boarding the plane to greet all of the passengers as they disembarked. A truly Irish hijacking indeed.
Written and directed by Moran, the cast stars Roseanna Purcell (Copper Face Jacks: The Musical, Red Rock, Fair City) and Mark Fitzgerald (Copper Face Jacks: The Musical, Alone It Stands). From 23 January, A Holy Show is going on a full nationwide tour, with dates announced for Galway, Limerick, Laois, Wicklow, Cavan, Carlow, Cork, Longford, Clare, Belfast and Tipperary as well as a host of Dublin dates and two dates in Paris. Tickets on sale now. See local venues for booking details
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Computer science/software development classes in secondary school would be a great help in the medium to long term. Not just for people who want to to be developers. Anyone who works anywhere in a chain in which computing and the web is involved from online retail to marketing to financial services can benefit from starting third level education with a solid understanding of how the web works.
Reduce corporation tax. Omg I crack myself up.
Being a ‘global technology hub’ is a dubious thing to aim for, and only realistic in any sense for the large cities. Smaller towns would have to focus on a particular element and race to keep up.
You are right, people who specialise in IT and computers are disposable, outsourceable, dime-a-dozen.
It’s people that have expert knowledge in another topic (medicine, science, manufacturing, sales, law etc) that bring moderate knowledge of applying computer power, workflows or accessibility to their workplace that are valuable.
Of course they also need the maths to work on image recognition, probability, statistics. I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing those courses in SOLAS countrywide.
What value would gigabit broadband bring that Docsis 3.1 UPC won’t? More streamed movies, games, ip telephony, ipv6 experience? Little effective value to anyone here.
The NCTE seem to be doing a decent job of putting fiber-optic managed 100Mbit broadband into schools.
Ridiculous pie-in-the-sky stuff. How can we be a global tech hub when the unions threaten to cut off the power every few years?
We could always ban unions
cant we just ban trolls like you instead?
Cant really be a technology hub, if we cant even roll out broadband across the country, we are so far behind the rest of Europe its embarrassing.
What a load of rubbish, 40% of the country either can’t get broadband or get a MAX of 1.5mb on the likes of the National broadband scheme.
Go with the fact that IT’s have ceased some of the core IT courses it doesn’t bode well.
Great service in Dublin. Most of the companies are located in the city.
Ireland is so far behind I cackled myself laughing at this. Ireland a tech hub? Anyone heard of that country that’s still producing islands out of nowhere and have already created some if the first real life robots. Japan. I also think japan recently announced they plan on using the moon to collect energy from the sun and beam enough back to earth to supply much of the world. Meanwhile in Ireland, some rural villages have received the good news that although broadband will not be making an appearance anytime soon, there will be no more 56k dial up. Hello ADSL.
Ireland. We’re not there yet, but were getting there.
Yada Marc, I know thats just a trolling comment.
True Bee Shop, its farcial and they will still actually believe that we can become a hub!!
How about having a TD who knew one end of a computer from another. If this industry is so important how come there’s not one engineer in the Dail?
Because not too many publicans are engineers. If we continue with parochial populist politics we’ll never have anyone qualified to do anymore than give empty promises because “thats what we do at election time”
The occupants of the Dail are not like real people Paul, they have to employ advisers to think for them. But real people never get a chance to act as advisers because those jobs are the preserve of the extended families of Dail members.
I can just see the reverse now. “Why we have so many engineers and not one doctor in the Dail or some s**t like that.” Can never please some people.
On another note broadband is decent enough in most rural areas. Living in real middle of nowhere rural area and getting 8mb, most I know living in more remote places and getting 3-5.
But Mr know it all will still say “country a joke”, or “in this day and age…..”
100% high speed coverage is not possible or practicable in any country really unless city centre folk want to subsidise the remote people with massive bills. Didn’t think so.
Peter, a TD wouldn’t know a computer from a commuter. Or a spiders web from the www, or a mega byte from a dogs bite
Bilbo Publicians?
We don’t allocate Dáil seats on the basis of profession. And there is nothing stopping engineers from running for election. They just don’t. If you are one yourself Peter, then why haven’t you?
Does Pearce Doherty, former engineer who lied about his qualifications count?
Basil McCrea up north is qualified in software engineering.
Gigabit broadband nationwide,some smart tech guys involved at government level and IT and coding classes from primary school should do it.
Very easily, fibre the whole country, what would it cost 5 billion?, no brainer to anyone with brains. We have the perfect weather conditions for green datacenters. Build the infrastucture and they will come. Do you recall the burst in innovation when broadband was introduced, could you imagine the innovation with 1000gb up and down. I’ll say again NO BRAINER!
Which has absolutely 0 to do with making us a tech hub. Broadband in the cities is plenty for that front. Its much more to do with a talent pool and investor pool shortage.
Hmm given all the faff talk there was about Free wi-fi in Dublin a while back – which never seems to work – This sounds like more spoof talk.
And security should be top of that list unless they want Ireland to be known as the leaky data center soft spot for hackers.
….and a nice staging post for the Yanks to hoover up all your FB and Google stuff.
Stuff is the technical term, I believe.
Aoife the first step Paul Sweetman should do is get Paddy Cosgrove from the Dublin web Summit involved. Paddy doesn’t talk the talk, he walks the walk.
Are you in love with the guy? you seem to mention him a lot
The best way to get a job with Web Summit is to send in your CV.
Neither, I respect a person when they make a positive step. He has, you haven’t, when you do I would praise you as well. Gosh, Byrne ye look bored or are ye whistling after the whistle.
These people talk an awful lot of c**p.
Broadband speeds are appalling outside of Dublin. I live in Meath and I never get above 3 download.
We don’t even have 4g properly rolled out yet. We will have 4g in areas outside of Dublin when America and Britain are rolling out 5g.
UPC is the only good broadband provider but if course they only provide to Dublin.
Using UPC in Limerick right now.
Limerick – very close to Shannon airport, several 3rd level institutions with people who leave once they get qualified and high youth unemployment.
It’s not all about Dublin – there are other cities too that would be very well capable of supporting tech innovation.
By never voting FF, LAB or FG ever again. Success can only follow
Or Sinn Féin, still not doing much for graduate unemployment with the education portfolio, even though they are the most popular party in QUB. Only exception is Pat Doherty MP who signed a Science is Vital Early Day Motion for Westminster by mistake against party rules.
The government are doing sterling work in this area- well done Enda
Yes kenneth and if they continue on as they are all work done in the country will also be valued in sterling
Tech hubs are made by having an accumulation of great technologists in one place. These engineers are young and mobile and can go and live anywhere in the world. They want good coffee, food, public transport, parks, theatre, cinemas, sports events and more. Later, when they become senior engineers they want playgrounds, schools, hospitals, 3 bedroom apartments and short commutes.
We have the attention of the tech companies, they all have offices here. The best thing we could do to nurture the growing tech industry in Dublin would be to tax vacant land to free up office and retail space, provide grants to hospitality industry startups (they do not seem to exist at the moment), allow the building of taller apartment and office blocks so that people can live and work in the city, reuse old industrial buildings where possible without redevelopment.
We have to compete with San Francisco, Berlin, and Singapore for talent and we see Irish people leaving their jobs every day to go to works in these cities and others.
The governments, past and present have done a great job attracting technology companies to this country; but the next step in making Dublin a tech hub, has to be about making it a great place to live.
A really long extension lead…
The key areas for growth seem like they just picked generic trending buzz words in the industry…
You need electricity for this, I’d say make it illegal for the the esb to shut down the electricity, or have another company that has control over the electricity so the esb whiny attitude doesn’t ruin businesses.
Ireland will never be ahead in Europe or the world because we let people like the esb control us, we need a totally new electricity company so when the esb mess up like this it wouldn’t be a threat.
What the hell has that got to do with Irelands future as a digital. Party hacks seem to try and jump on any story to try and turn the people against workers.
The talent being hired in Irish technology is already mostly foreign national but if we lead with infrastructure the companies would be falling over themselves trying to get in. Data centres powered by wind and wave energy superfast broadband. NO VISION!
One of the last countries in the EU to have 4G I am beaming with confidence.
After reading a good chunk of the comments it seems people regard high speed broadband with 100% coverage as a necessity. It simply isn’t.
It would also seem that the word “technology” inspires fairly narrow thoughts.
Myself and a group in Limerick are pretty much there in creating a proposal for a Fab Lab here. Funding is already in place for one at Cloughjordan EcoVillage. Fab Labs are about digital manufacturing of prototypes from 3D printing/precision milling to laser cutting and CNC milling (and more). Not just in putting in material and a program, but creating the content – often involving flashing programs to microcontrollers and sensors. Arduino, Raspberry Pi and your own custom-milled circuit boards are the order of the day.
Fab Labs are an opportunity for all kinds of users at all kinds of ages to engage with technology and likely find a love for it. The cost is hardly back-breaking either at about €200,000 including a first year of salaries after which, with good promotion and hard work, you could expect to be sustainable.
In Ireland, there’s room for at least 7 in my opinion. Currently, Cloughjordan have managed one.
I skimmed the report and I am a bit underwhelmed. I have heard the hype from the digital geeks about how all this digital infrastructure will bring utopia. Yes, we can use good high speed internet in the rural parts and good digital services that go along with them, but it’s not a end all. We need a mix of industry that supports the Irish population. We need renewable energy, culture ( film, music, art, theatre), we need affordable reliable transport, efficient modern building technology that harmonizes with traditional building. We need good distributed retail that supports small shops and producers while providing the choice available from big box stores. Yes, digital infrastructure can support this but it shouldn’t be the end goal. Silicon Valley might look like an great idea but in reality no one can afford to live there …. Except as homeless in the streets or hours away…
Can’t download the pdf on my phone to read it. So yea, better internet access over air and wire would be high up the list.
no! this is ireland mate,not a cat in hells chance .
Just confirming, theres no cable landing here that makes this island anything other than a spur, not a hub, of global internet connectivity.
Thanks Michael Lowry.
Sure the majority of td’s can’t even use a tv remote control, what do you expect.
‘technology hub’ my arse ! most of the country cant even get reliable broadband ffs, 1 meg max if were lucky, and between 4.30 and 6 pm its quicker to send by snail. some parts of the country cant get a decent mobile phone signal, others cant even get tv3. until this government allows other componies beside eirecom to run the phone networks well be stuck with a crap service for years to come! break the monopoly on networks and exchanges ,then we might have a chance
Maybe steer universities towards Research & Development into newer technologies, rather than just awareness of new? Perhaps using theoretical scientists from the natural sciences to carry out research instead of just engineers?
Conor, you should hook youself up to a 56k modem and think about why you ever needed broodband. I have never heard anyone complaining their broadband was too fast.
The number of people employed in the technology sector is being greatly exaggerated to suit the promotion of Ireland as a “knowledge-worker” hub.
Anyone who answers a phone in a call centre is classed as a knowledge worker, even if the only technology training they have is to read though a list of questions and arrive at a solution. These jobs can move very quickly and should not form the basis for promoting a high tech hub (eg “Talk talk” in Waterford).
IMO…
■ If UPC can get high speed Internet, the government can too. But they won’t.
■ Solas are providing some good computer training courses that will help but they do not have many progression levels to get trainees beyond the basics.
■ If parents were really concerned about their children learning about computers they would contact their nearest Coder Dojo.
■ The government can print all the papers that it wants but some of the answers are already out there for people to get involved and get ahead.
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[End of rant]
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