The Arts: John McColgan still recalls the pleasurable frisson of terror he felt hearing ghost stories around the oil lamp as a child in Wexford. Now the 'Riverdance' producer plans to recreate the sensation in the theatre by adding magic to the mix, he tells Sara Keating
THE INSALUBRIOUS surroundings of Little Mary Street seem an incongruous site for the home of Ireland's premier entertainment production hub. However, tucked away behind the tattered shop fronts of ethnic food stores and exotic hair salons lies the stunning headquarters of Riverdream, the collective creative umbrella of John McColgan and Moya Doherty's ambitious television and theatrical enterprise. The building was originally a 19th-century tram yard and, concealed behind its modest entrance, light floods through glass walls and ceilings and perforated iron beams. It is a grim Monday morning, but Riverdream seems impervious to the dirty grey reality of the Dublin day. As McColgan begins to regale me with the ghost stories that sowed the seeds of Riverdream's latest venture, Magick Macabre, the effect is somewhat surreal.
Magick Macabreis a new stage show which, as McColgan tells it, "sets magic and illusion in a storytelling context. It is set in a supernatural word where the unexpected happens, and it draws on the genre of the horror movie".
"Horror is one of the most successful genres in cinema, and its appeal has lasted right up to the present day, but we're trying to recreate the genre on stage and the really exhilarating thing is that the illusion is live - live and dangerous, happening in front of you - and that makes it more scary. We are trying to appeal to something primal, the part of us that enjoys going into a dark space and being scared to death.
"But the thing about theatre is that is collective and the thing about the fiction of it is that it is safe."
McColgan has been developing Magick Macabrewith his wife and co-producer, Moya Doherty, for almost five years, after he was invited by a young children's magician, Joe Daly, to come and see his one-man magic show, Vapours.
"It was set in a haunted castle," McColgan explains, "and was based around this character called Daemon Cordell. The show included illusions and magic tricks mixed with horror. Joe was a children's magician who had no experience in the theatre, but he had sold his car and borrowed money from the credit union to finance this show. It was brilliant, really imaginative, so I invited him in to see me and we talked about how we might develop the idea on a larger scale."
McColgan's interest in the potential of Daly's original concept was simple.
"It brought me back to my childhood fascination with horror stories," he says. "I remember when I was a boy in Wexford, and my father used to read to me from a magazine called Our Boys. There was this character called Kitty O'Hare who used to wander the roads at night and meet ghosts. We lived on this farm in the middle of nowhere, and this was before electricity, so these stories were being read by oil lamps. It was deliciously scary; my father was frightening me to death, but in a safe way.
"Then, when I was about six or seven, I saw some travelling players do a show called Murder in the Red Barnand there was a scene at the end where someone had their head split open, and there was blood and gore all over the place, and I thought that was fantastic. Magick Macabrehas taken me right back there."
FIVE YEARS SEEMSan inordinately long time for the development of a stage show, but, as McColgan says, "the presentation of magic tricks might seem simple, but there is a lot of work behind it. To do illusions is complex conceptually, as well as technically".
After designing the illusions with the help of Daly and a box of tricks from international stars such as David Copperfield, a team of technicians needed to be recruited to facilitate the illusions on stage. Thomas de Mallet Burgess and Ferdia Murphy were brought on board to direct and design the show, while sound designer Denis Clohessy was commissioned to compose a soundtrack.
"We made a decision early on that there would be no dialogue," explains McColgan. "So we are relying on the soundtrack to communicate and create the atmosphere, and we have a surround system installed to ensure that the ground will, literally, be trembling underfoot, so that all the tension that you associate with horror cinema will be in the theatre too."
McColgan, constructively, views Magick Macabre'spremiere as "the show's first outing, its first incarnation, and we expect it to grow and evolve as we see the audience's reaction". It is a practical attitude to creative risk that comes after years of experience. In fact, Riverdream's most successful enterprise, Riverdance, was propelled by audience reaction from a seven-minute filler slot at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest to a multi-million-pound phenomenon.
" Riverdancewas really the beginning of a crazy journey," McColgan says, putting the last 14 years of his career in context. "I suppose it was also the beginning of our interest in producing live theatre."
This interest inspired projects such as The Shaughraun, by Boucicault, directed by McColgan for the Abbey Theatre's centenary celebrations and taken to the West End by McColgan and Doherty, and their production of a new musical, The Pirate Queen, on Broadway last year. However, these theatrical endeavours were not really a new departure, but simply the reawakening of old interests.
"I had always loved theatre," McColgan says. "I mean, when I left school at 14 and took a job at the post office, I used to deliver telegrams to the Queen's Theatre and sneak in the back and watch the actors rehearse, standing there in the dark with the fantasy world on-stage.
"You know, I was even an actor for a while and I was actually accepted by Frank Dermody at the Abbey School of Acting, but right at the same time I was offered a job at RTÉ, and the choice, I suppose, was between £2 a week and £12 a week. RTÉ was such a new and exciting place to be involved in - so no regrets."
But even as McColgan worked his way up through the RTÉ ranks, theatre remained a real interest as he produced and directed various documentaries on the old variety and music-hall world of the Queen's, the Gaiety and the Olympia. Now it is the work of production companies like Riverdream that fills such venues, and McColgan is proud that he can place himself within a tradition he has helped to commemorate.
"People call it commercial theatre," he says, but "every theatre company wants to be commercial, they want to appeal to an audience, and whether I'm doing populist or serious stuff, that's my focus.
"I watch everything that I do from the back row of the theatre - or, with the television work, from the couch in my living room - and I try and imagine what the audience will engage with. That's the imperative."
THAT AN AUDIENCEcan break as well as make a show is a lesson McColgan learnt last year when The Pirate Queenclosed on Broadway after 85 performances.
"It was heartbreaking," he admits. "Anybody who mounts such a large-scale show really believes in it. You wouldn't put in all that work, all that commitment, if you didn't.
"And we were immensely proud of it. But a couple of the principal Broadway critics didn't like it. Ben Brantley hated it, and that's the power of the New York Times. If you get a major critic who doesn't like your show - and he really didn't - it can be a death sentence, even though it was received tremendously well by the audience and we had standing ovations every night.
"But you have to remember the failure rate on musical theatre is actually extremely high. In fact, 80 per cent of musicals will fail - and that's the risk that you go in there knowing."
Even so, The Pirate Queencontinues to have a life, and - "a real oddity," McColgan admits - will be produced in Japan in December 2009.
The life of Magick Macabre, meanwhile, is secure, no matter what the Irish audiences make of it, as a second version of the show is in development in Las Vegas under the Wes Craven brand, the Hollywood horror director having completed a script for a larger, "Cirque du Soleil scale show".
In one sense, then, it does not matter what the critics make of Magick Macabre, as its commercial future is assured. However, McColgan will still be sitting in the back of the stalls listening to what the audience have to say as the curtain falls.
•Magick Macabre opens at the Olympia, Dublin, on Tuesday and runs until Nov 15
