Admiration for the ordinary

Nicole McDermott

Playwright, director and actor Liz O’Hanlon is launching her collection of short plays this May. Although, she never liked the word “writer”. She rather regards herself as an observer.

Liz traces this trait back to her childhood, standing in the back of her mother’s sweet shop on Main Street, Bailieborough, watching customers come and go.

“Everybody and anybody came into our kitchen, because it was like an extension to the shop. So it was as open a house as anything. Watching all those people, it was lovely.”

She has sat on benches, stood in pubs and checkout lines, listening to people, seen them stroll by, interacting with each other. Liz has picked up lines that stuck with her, sometimes for years. These lines grow inside and eventually blossom into characters and stories.

“We all have two ears and one mouth. So I feel we should listen twice as much as we talk, and I feel sometimes we hear an awful lot more by just watching and observing.”

It’s not the supposedly big days that get her excited. Unless it’s the story of how a drunk person stumbling out of the wedding venue falls for the wallet-on-a-string-trick played by kids hiding behind a car. These moments have found their way into the faceted personalities of her one act plays.

Her friends were the driving force behind publishing the three stage performed plays.

The book will be launched May 11 at Bailieborough Courthouse, and is available to buy in local Cavan bookshops.

‘3 One Act Plays’ consists of ‘The Sacred Heart’s Right Hand Man’ (2016), ‘Smile Handsome’ (2018) and the 2024 All Ireland Winning Play ‘Dying Minutes’.

The characters are ordinary people, but with an edge, often hiding a deeper truth, a dark past or another identity, because of either shame or pride. Or because perhaps other people have already made their minds up about them.

Kathleen in ‘Smile Handsome’ is one such character that makes audiences twitch uncomfortably. This loud-mouthed, brash woman with big earrings challenges societal norms, while being exposed to their derision.

While O’Hanlon’s witty plays teem with laughs, her dynamic of undercutting humour with incisive truths exposes audiences. Suddenly they feel confronted with the question: “Are they laughing with her or at her?”

O’Hanlon tries to get people to pause a moment and reflect on their own feelings and judgements.

“It’s very much holding the mirror up to society. This play was for us to check ourselves on how we judge other people, what our first instinct is, judging by what they look like.”

She takes this a step further by letting her protagonists eventually burst out their inner thoughts after masking pain and boxing up emotions.

“You think you have the monopoly on grief, because you cried more than me?” is an accusation that hits hard for many, because we don’t always acknowledge that people deal with pain differently.

Liz hopes people will reflect on the topics, but adds: “We are not here to fix anything. It’s just allowing people to be who they are.”

She likes blindsiding audiences with issues, but in general her works are full of humour and banter. Which goes some way to explaining the title ‘The Sacred Hearts Right Hand Man’. Once upon a time Liz says, back in the same kitchen next to the sweet shop, hung the Sacred Heart on the wall with the red light. To the right hung a photo of country legend ‘Big Tom’ who her mother adored.

“It was the only photo in the kitchen,” Liz recalls, and when this observer’s future husband visited for the first time he mistook the prominently depicted man for her father.

This is the type of ordinary occasions Liz embraces in life and gives a special place in her plays.