Written and Performed by Sinéad O’Brien

Review by Dominic Corr

Tickets: £15.00 (Con available)

It takes a few minutes to realise that Sinead O’Brien has started their performance, although performance isn’t strictly the correct term here – given how authentic their storytelling ability is. There’s nothing here which isn’t genuine or engrossing.

So naturally talented with the craft that even the introductions and pleasantries are so genuinely welcoming, they thread into Hero/Banlaoch’s grander story of O’Brien’s relationship with their alcoholic father and the transitions of our greatest heroes into the one thing we struggle to believe: they’re mortal.

Growing up in a home with mental health issues and addiction, storyteller O’Brien thinks that they’ve done pretty alright – all things considered. For the human nature of flesh and bone, ageing can alter our perspectives; Hero/ Banlaoch laces itself into re-examining the stories of wishes and clashing blades told, and the depths of revisiting these as an adult to unearth new home truths. And now, having grown up with the belief that their dad was the ‘fun’ parent, O’Brien’s storytelling piece shows how all of those fun memories, poured into O’Brien’s fingers, have begun to trickle out beneath their fingers.

There’s is no loss of momentum or pace as we dip between legend and reality, the show structured to open up to audiences about the relationship between O’Brien and their father while using Irish legend and folklore (chiefly the tales of Fionn McCool) to draw parallels of healing, love, home truths, and letting go. They say ‘never meet your heroes’, but that’s quite tough to do when they happen to be your dad.

A companion piece to O’Brien’s other show, No One Is Coming, it cannot be recommended enough to see the pair as a set (on alternating days). For any who caught the mesmeric show last year, to fill in the gaps and missing pieces from their experiences with their mother are even more enhanced with the cross sections where the two stories meet, but never interrupt.

Almost a mirror of No One Is Coming, Hero/Banlaoch shares the down-scaled intimacy of the show – O’Brien’s costuming even a reflection of the title, the focus on the warrior McCool, and a ‘cooler’ tone compared to the more combustive moments of No One is Coming. But while Hero/Banlbiaoch may wield humour and revelation with a softer hand, it is no less impactful in its intellect and tone – all carried with the weight of a truly awe-inspiring storyteller who is not only a firm advocate of the craft, but very much the future of its success, and the broadening of Irish folktale and history.

A collection of anecdotes which embolden and strengthen, most crucially open to the truth, Hero/Banlaoch is a piece of integrity and nourishment, but one so clearly shared (rather than told) to audiences with genuine affection and skill.

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