The rocky road which led to the spectacular success of Mr Joyce is Leaving Paris in Dublin, left management and audience hungry for more from author Tom Gallacher.
And pat from his satchel he produced – Revival! A tale of an actor-manager thinking about – and actually – jumping from the top of his sky-high set while playing in Ibsen’s The Master Builder… his intention, to check out whether his many years of spiritual self-improvement would actually result in his achieving, not a messy splat on a public stage, but a higher plane of living.
The concept may sound nutty to the average reader, but Gallacher had a genuine interest in the `self-improvement’ ideas of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
The crucial thing (as ever) was that dialogue and plot were innovative and highly entertaining.
As the actor-manager I cast Julian Somers, who I had first seen when I was fifteen playing Iago at the Library Theatre, Manchester (see my book Are You Going to do That Little Jump?) for the full story.
We opened in Dublin to very good reviews…
