A North Strand family plots to block development, and worries about tropical fish, in a new play at the Viking Theatre

The stage is mostly bare, save for four music stands lined up and holding scripts in place.

Behind each stand is an actor in full flight, barrelling through Dublinese-laden dialogue.

“Make it a bit more anxious,” says Michael J. Hartnett, writer and director of the new comedy play Tropical Fish in the Tolka.

Veteran stage and screen actor Owen O’Gorman nods at Hartnett. He repeats the line – anxiously.

The new play runs from 10–29 November here in Clontarf’s Viking Theatre. Rehearsals are in full swing.

“It’s all about community,” says O’Gorman in a big voice from the stage. He is in character as Bob Bradshaw, pleading to his wife Liz, who wants to sell their North Strand home of more than four decades.

Indeed, community is at the heart of this timely piece of writing, says Hartnett, later.

There is an added quirk to the play’s presentation, he says. It’s performed entirely as a live radio play, with the cast playing actors playing the Bradshaw family.

Come opening night, the stage will be decked out like a radio station – the aptly titled “Radio 1014” in tribute to the Battle of Clontarf that year, which plays an important if unexpected role in this story.

Why take this stylistic approach? Because he’s never seen it done before, Hartnett says, with a smile and a shrug.

Moving ground

The story revolves around the embattled Bradshaw family.

Husband Bob, played by O’Gorman; wife Liz, played by Pat Sullivan; granddaughter Amy, played by Heather Hennessy. Jamie Brunty serves as narrator, and also voices a slew of other characters.

Set at Halloween, after a bad storm that has wreaked havoc on the roof, tensions are high from the get-go.

Liz is at her wits’ end with Bob. He’s a man who simultaneously “knows everything” and has his head firmly in the clouds.

The play’s title comes from Bob’s worry that climate change, of which he is a self-professed expert, will lead to tropical fish swimming up the River Tolka.

The couple’s children have long since grown up and left home, and have been replaced by whatever junk and clutter Bob has been able to get his hands on.

Liz wants to move to a new, smaller house. To leave it all behind. It’s a desire fuelled largely by plans for a new apartment block to be built next door.

It not only means unbearable noise but, as Bob sees it, a heartbreaking change to a tight-knit community.

It’s in gentle moments of reminiscing about their lives there, among that community, that the love between Liz and Bob emerges and the arguments pause.

But they don’t pause for long. Bob devises a farcical plan to halt development with the help of his granddaughter Amy.

Needing to laugh

Hartnett’s writing career began in his early twenties, he says, when he wrote for a pantomime.

Eventually, he started getting work writing for TV adverts, radio plays and eventually, the stage.

The sights, sounds and characters of Dublin run through much of his work.

His first play, Shamming the Read, was about the death of the docklands after containerisation changed the game.

His new novel, Fountain of Greed – which he launched in Books Upstairs on D’Olier Street on Wednesday night – tells of a David and Goliath clash between an independent plumbing contractor and an unscrupulous property developer.

The kind of developer that Owen O’Gorman’s character Bob refers to as “gurriers in suits” in Tropical Fish in the Tolka.

“Most of my stuff is very serious,” says Hartnett. “So, Pat Sullivan challenged me to write a comedy.”

Tropical Fish in the Tolka took about a month to write, says Hartnett.

People are into comedies more than ever, says co-owner of the Viking Theatre, Laura Dowdall.

Since the pandemic, she says, punters are looking for a laugh. And shows that aren’t too long, she says.

Community support for the Viking Theatre has been incredibly strong since they opened their doors, she said by phone on Thursday. They’re about to celebrate its fourteenth anniversary, she says.

The theatre, above Connolly’s The Sheds pub and opposite the Clontarf promenade, holds 65 people.

“We have regulars who will come to every show. They value it,” she says.

More small local theatres like The Viking are really needed on the northside, says Green Party councillor for Clontarf, Donna Cooney, Green Party spokesperson for arts and culture.

The Viking gives an opportunity to see a play that can often end up in bigger theatres afterwards, she says.

It’s good for established playwrights like Harnett, she says. But also “there's others that are maybe starting off and getting an opportunity to have their plays staged in the local theatre is huge”.

Another family

Off stage, on break during rehearsals at the theatre, there’s a warm familial bond among the cast.

Tropical Fish in the Tolka is Hennessey’s second professional acting gig, though she won several awards recently. “On the amateur drama circuit”, she says.

She seems suddenly uncomfortable at their mention. But O’Gorman speaks up, encouraging her to be proud of her achievement.

Hartnett joins the chorus. “I hope you put these awards in your bio,” he tells her.

Sullivan sits down beside them and untangles her lunch from its tinfoil.

Within seconds the gang are in flitters, laughing at her contribution to the conversation: “Nothing worse in life than a soggy wrap.”

Sullivan has worked with Hartnett on many productions over the years, but similarly to her younger counterpart, isn’t keen to talk herself up.

Hartnett is more than happy to do that for her however – bragging, on her behalf, about her excellent regular production work at the Sean O’Casey Theatre in East Wall, and her acting credits.

She has been working since the early 1970s, she says, after some encouragement, in radio, TV and stage. “Ah yeah, I just absolutely love it,” she says.

Like Hennessy, Jamie Brunty is still just starting out. He is delighted with the challenge of taking on multiple characters and voices, he says.

Some of the characters he plays are from the same area and even have similar jobs in the building trade, and he loved working out how to make them different and defined from each other.

He got help at this other job, Brunty says.“I work in Maxol in Donabate. I basically stole the voices from some of our customers,” he says, through a chuckle.

Ever timely

The story of a longstanding community grappling with a changing and denser landscape is timely. 

Ask the residents of Coultry Gardens in Ballymun, who came home one Friday in August to discover a planning notice for 463 apartments and duplexes in 10 new buildings in their quiet estate.

Even more surprised were the residents of four particular houses, that the notice informed them, are to be knocked down after Christmas to make way for the new development.

The conflict between not wanting one’s neighbourhood to change too much, and understanding that people need homes, is touched on in Tropical Fish in the Tolka too.

Bob concedes to Liz that of course homes are needed. Just “not egg boxes”, he says, describing the proposed apartments.

Still, Liz just doesn’t want to live next to a building site for several years – she wants out.

Bob muses over what he loves about North Strand. The local characters, family roots, and the area’s deep history – from the Fairview Grand cinema, where Liz once worked as an usher, to how the community rallied after the Nazi bombing in 1941.

And of course, the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when it wasn’t tropical fish, but Viking long boats sailing up the Tolka, says Bob.

This gives him and Amy an idea as to how they might “bury” the construction plans. The stakes – and Liz’s blood pressure – are raised.

Tropical Fish in the Tolka runs for three weeks from 10 November. Tickets are available from The Viking Theatre here.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.