In the early 1990s, when Irish theatre was enjoying an eclectic flirtation with Hellenism, there was a need for actors with rich voices and statuesque physicality, to play mythological heroes with a mix of song and majesty. Seán Rocks fitted right in.
He was seen in Bob Crowley’s production of The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney’s play for Field Day, as a soul-searching warrior in terracotta robes. There’s a photo of him as Naoise in W.B. Yeats’s Deirdre, in an otherworldly Abbey Theatre production created by Derek Chapman and Sarah Jane Scaife, lifting Mary McGuickian’s Deirdre into his arms.
His striking presence – a tall wonder with wavy hair parted on the side, and a Monaghan accent that could turn gilded gold – continued to make him a good fit for plays with supernatural ambiences, including the Gate Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Joe Dowling, wherein Rocks played one of the young lovers spiked by a love potion. However, the production that endured most was Portia Coughlan – the extraordinary play by Marina Carr, and directed by Garry Hynes for the Abbey – where he played a frustrated husband trying to make his wife happy on her birthday (the role was mostly a foil for Derbhle Crotty’s funnily cruel but seriously depressed housewife, who is haunted by the ghost of her twin brother).
It would have been a pleasure to see him playing a busily seductive Michael Collins in Tom MacIntyre’s Good Evening, Mr Collins; as one of the sharply-dressed gangsters in Druid’s revival of The Blue Macushla by Tom Murphy, or to hear his cameo in that playwright’s Bailegangaire (where, coincidentally, he played a voice on a radio).
On RTÉ Arena, he had a stateliness as he provided a breathless balance of mediums, interviewing Salman Rushdie, Werner Herzog, Michael Longley, Paul Schrader, Tom Murphy, Wes Anderson, Sally Rooney, Andrew Scott, Armando Iannucci, Ruth Negga, Rachel Kushner, CMAT, Maser, Kneecap’s Mo Chara, Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, and many other names I’ve wrongfully omitted. The programme assembled impressive panels of critics (of different generations) for each discussed artform, and you could hear Rocks relishing both their loving enthusiasm and their frank brush-offs of the art they didn’t like.
In interviews, he was impressively present and not handcuffed to pre-prepared questions. There was also a welcome mischief: listen to him enjoying Claire O’Reilly sidestep a prickly-delivered question about stage directions in Emma, or getting a chuckle out of Garry Hynes when he simplifies directing as “say the line and get out of the way.”
While sounding genuinely curious about all artforms, Rocks was a theatre creature, and I suspect that was his number one medium. RTÉ Arena’s back catalogue resembles an archive of headlines from the 2010s, such as the exodus of programmers on the eve of Limerick City of Culture, or the grassroots change by WakingTheFeminists.
I’ve compiled some highlights below – specifically theatre or theatre-adjacent (critics from other mediums might make other lists). RTÉ Arena hit the air in 2009 but clips on the RTÉ archive only seem to be available from late 2013 onwards, which removes the 2010 interview with Tom Murphy (goddamn it!).
“This is purely and absolutely biographical?” asks Rocks, pouncing on the remarkable real-life story of playwright-performer Noelle Brown. You can tell he knew it was a good story for broadcast; Brown had spent 12 years being stonewalled by government and church services in trying to learn the identity of her birth mother. Her cleverness shines, as she explains how, in her play Postscript, she took public messaging discouraging adoptees from hiring private investigators to find their birth parents, and used it to invent a gumshoe detective persona to tell her story. “Did anger play a part in writing this play?” asks Rocks. Delicious question.
Every journalist will understand the quiet frustration of conversations going wayward, in this case Rocks and director Andrew Flynn taking some time to set the table to discuss the casting for The Mai – a revival of Marina Carr’s play that features performers from previous stagings now playing older generations. Instantaneous is the warmth when Derbhle Crotty begins speaking – reuniting her and Rocks after Portia Coughlan, both speaking with smiling familiarity, in a grandeur of Lakeland accents. Rocks is incredibly present, and is conceiving questions off the cuff. “You mentioned The Mai as being operatic. Is that another Marina Carr “trope,” to use that awful phrase?” he asks. “Well there’s a line in Portia Coughlan, isn’t there?” Crotty nudges playfully. “I’d prefer a cup of tea and a good opera to sex any day.”
3. The Schaubühne’s Hamlet at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre
Treat yourself with this revisit to the mayhem wreaked on the commercial Bord Gáis Energy Theatre by the dangerous, unpredictable Hamlet by German director Thomas Ostermeier. The report gets off to a flying start with Rocks asking “How far are we in this Hamlet from the story of a tortured young prince in Denmark?”, causing the Irish Independent theatre critic Sophie Gorman to splutter with laughter.
A sort of surreal interview where comic Alison Spittle – who sounds like she’s choked-up (she clarifies she has a sore throat) – talks about her latest stand-up Alison Spittle Discovers Hawaii. Spittle sounds naturally cheery and wisecracking, so it jars when she explains the stand-up is informed by serious trauma – she experienced not one but two home invasions. You can hear Rocks enjoying her – he chuckles when she asks him if he’s seen Dog the Bounty Horror – and then him getting serious guiding the interview through the burglaries. She seems to leave him impressed by her grasp on comedy, on how it can purge trauma. “When did you think there was the essence of something funny within that traumatic experience?” he asks. (Worth a listen if only for Spittle’s description to police that a home invader resembled one of the Back Street Boys).
5. Enda Walsh and Donnacha Dennehy
The interview encompassing one of the standout collaborations of the 2010s: composer Donnacha Dennehy and director-librettist Enda Walsh’s Suburban Trilogy. Walsh is always quick on the mic, and jokey – “There’s lots and lots of drugs involved,” he says, when Rocks asks about his busy schedule. They are a subtle double-act, with Dennehy the more grounded of the two, and gentlemanly. “When he sent the last libretto, I thought ‘Jesus I can read Enda’s mind, and he can read mine!” says Dennehy excitedly. “I’ve been a fan of Donnacha for a long time,” says Walsh. Irish opera’s under-acknowledged bromance.
Among the dispatches from a tribute to recently-deceased playwright Tom MacIntyre is a revelation by Tommy Tiernan that he has a tattoo of MacIntyre on his ribs! Rocks sounds amused. It’s a somewhat wild memorial – which is appropriate for McIntyre’s wild persona. This is also the best service done to a playwright whose notable career had receded in recent decades. (It may have been Rock’s time performing in his play Good Evening, Mr Collins that motivated him to cover it). The programme revisits MacIntyre’s legendary 1985 play The Great Hunger, with recollections by some of its cast – the avant-garde veterans Bríd Ní Neachtain and Joan Sheehy. A nice tribute to the playwright who remade the Irish play.
It isn’t easy to fill 15 minutes of air with the existentially-tinged absurdist art of Samuel Beckett – especially the oblique, nebulous novella Company, which director Sarah Jane Scaife adapted for stage. Rocks is about the only broadcaster on Irish radio who can guide and nudge a conversation about Beckett. More extraordinary is hearing Scaife, grieving the recent death of her husband, talking about how a previous production of Company first brought them together, and even became shorthand in their home. Rocks is respectably sympathetic in approaching it: “But the death of a life-partner, peculiarly linked in with this play?”. “I sometimes think my whole life is a series of patterns,” says Scaife.
In another defining tribute of recent years, Rocks dedicates a segment to the sad loss of actor Tom Hickey. Patrick Mason – a prolific director for decades, seemingly retired in recent years – returned to convey the breadth of Hickey’s daring career. He positions Hickey at the absolute centre of The Great Hunger: “It’s very nice that now everyone fondly remembers The Great Hunger. At the time it caused a lot of trouble,” he laughs. “I’ve seen Hickey go out there with what you might call a hostile audience and just win them over,” he says. Rocks chimes in, sounding more like a peer than an interviewer (he acted opposite Hickey in Portia Coughlan): “You would take risks when Tom Hickey was in the room.” Mason gives listeners the lasting image of Hickey, a Chekhov lover, stepping aside at the Moscow Art Theatre to kiss the stage curtain.
We don’t see as much from Chicagoan Annie Ryan, the director responsible for infusing Irish theatre with a refreshing gale of Off-Off Broadway and Commedia dell’arte experiments, as we used to. This interview, on the 20th anniversary of her company Corn Exchange, allows her to relish in classic arthouse obsessions, enthusiastically talking about Chekhov, Ibsen and Bergman. Of course, Rocks is just as read-up. Towards the end, the highly visual director is talking in cinematic terms, about emulating onstage close zoom-ups and snaps to wide-shots. They really don’t make directors like this any more.
Not a theatre segment but truly Rocks’s most essential broadcast – the response to the breaking news of Sinéad O’Connor’s death. Rocks returns from an ad break, his voice completely changed, making the announcement as the producer swiftly summons a choked-up Dave Fanning, who struggles in the beginning. “I’ll give you time Dave,” says Rocks, who is a firm, dignified anchor throughout, eliciting contributions while allowing for tremulations of grief. Fanning helps keep the focus away from easy controversies that have unfairly ensnared O’Connor’s reputation, and is quick to pivot to the recent renaissance in her music-making. “She has been on the Irish music scene for quite a long time but she has been as fresh in recent years as she ever was,” helps Rocks. He allows another music broadcaster, Paul McLoone, time to search through his shock to form a tribute, touching on recent awards and appearances. “I just hope it’s the music that’s remembered,” says McLoone. “Then let us do that!” Rocks interjects tactfully, seizing control of a broadcast improvising in real time, while simultaneously sounding urgent about the importance of art. “Let us listen to the music”!