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‘I want to show how class it is, simple as that’: Siobhan McSweeney on her love for Northern Ireland

Siobhan McSweeney - Waddell Media
Siobhan McSweeney - Waddell Media

In the opening to Exploring Northern Ireland with Siobhan McSweeney, the performer stands beside her trusty e-bike and tells the audience what happened when she was asked to present.

“Where am I going, I asked. Am I going to the Maldives? Am I going to the Bahamas? Am I going to the Seychelles? No. Siobhan McSweeney, you’re going to Northern Ireland.”

“Well,” she explains to me over Zoom, “I just wanted to get out of my flat.”

The actor is no Northern lass. She is Cork city born and bred, who had no real experience of the North until some acting jobs required a venture over the border, including TV programme The Fall and a play in the Lyric theatre. And of course, the hit TV show Derry Girls.

“I feel a huge obligation to Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland has been so good to me and, living in London, I’m aware of the polite ignorance that permeates around the topic of Northern Ireland here,” she says.

She’s not wrong. Among other things, Brexit served to highlight the huge chasm of knowledge over the territory. And despite Northern Ireland being within the Common Travel Area – meaning no quarantine restrictions for UK travellers on either side of the journey – there hasn’t exactly been an influx of visitors to the isle.

The series was filmed on and off throughout the last year, juggling both varying lockdown measures and Siobhan’s schedule, which she admits was all over the place. Despite this, they spent a week in each area so that they could visit both the obvious tourist attractions and those that are less well-known.

“I very much wanted to show, in as honest and authentic a way as possible, the people I know in Northern Ireland and the experiences I’ve had and show how class it is. It’s as simple as that. And something as simple as that can be quite radical in its own way. I’m not saying a travel show is radical and certainly not the way we’re doing it, but it’s an honest depiction and a fun depiction of an incredible place that people should go and visit post-haste!”

Here are a few reasons why:

Sublime art born from past tensions

Walking around Belfast, you can’t fail to notice the street art, touching on themes ranging from past tensions to its industrial heritage.

“The art permeates every place,” says McSweeney. “We visited [Seamus] Heaney’s birthplace. What was lovely meeting everyone was how proud they were of where they were coming from. They were able to quote a poem or a song that put them on a more international level, a more artistic level. You got a sense that there was this real communion between the land and the art, that one fed the other.”

This is what Colin Davidson, the world-renowned Belfast-born portrait artist, implies to Siobhan when she goes to visit his studio. Propped on an easel is a painting of Belfast, a landscape that he personally views as a series of mini portraitures.

“Because that’s what cities are aren’t they? They’re just empty shells without the people,” says McSweeney. “This place is beautiful, but it doesn’t exist without the people, without the warm welcome.”

street art belfast - Getty Images
street art belfast - Getty Images

Game of Thrones relics

Despite not being a big fan of Game of Thrones, McSweeney can respect the industry that it’s created in Northern Ireland. As she sits in the cable car of Harland and Wolff – the shipyard that built the Titanic – we are privy to a bird’s eye view of the £1 million set which includes a custom built castle.

“In fairness to the series, one of the reasons that the [film and TV] industry [in Belfast] is world class is because of Game of Thrones. Because purely from a technical point of view, the people they brought on as apprentices back in the 1800s,” she laughs, “when they started Game of Thrones, they’re all heads of departments now so you have a world class crew and specialists and it’s extraordinary. And it’s something that should be celebrated a bit more.”

ballintoy harbour - Getty Images
ballintoy harbour - Getty Images

No paddywhackery

St Patrick’s Day has become synonymous the world over for dyed green lakes and green parades. Like Christmas, it has lost the religious essence in lieu of a commercial one. So when McSweeney embarks on St Patrick’s trail, the end point of which is where St Patrick is meant to be buried at Down Cathedral, she admits to the audience that she half expects to find it to be sponsored by Guinness. Instead, it’s rather peaceful, void of decoration, with the Mourne Mountains in the distance.

“I’m quite anti-religious to a certain extent, but I found that a very moving place and I think that any place that people visit for any reason, it has the energy of people coming to visit for hundreds of years,” she says.

Apparently, he’s not the only one in the grave – as an old rhyme goes: “In Down one grave three saints do fill – St Patrick, Bridget and Colmcille.” Old meets new, though, in this grave, as McSweeney references how St Bridget was used more recently as a symbol in Ireland’s 2018 repeal of the Eighth Amendment referendum and the fight for reproductive rights.

exploring northern ireland siobhan mcsweeney - Waddell Media
exploring northern ireland siobhan mcsweeney - Waddell Media

Tap into its pagan and Viking heritage

The city of Armagh, once the site of the most important church, monastery and monastic school in the north of Ireland, is now home to the Armagh Rhymers, a traditional music and theatre ensemble. Their colourful costumes encapsulate the spirit of the Wren boys and the ancient house visiting traditions of Ireland, where the kitchen floor became the stage. As Siobhan follows the troupe through the ancient Irish city, she feels as though their performance taps into her inner ancient actor.

“A time when you jumped into the back of the van or wagon and go on to the next place to do your performance,” she says. The Rhyming tradition is a celebration of the ‘theatre of the people’ and has inspired many poets such as Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, John Montague and John Hewitt.

Further east, in Strangford, dressed as a Viking woman, Siobhan witnesses first-hand the influence of the Vikings, who first came to the area in 795 and quickly made it one of their strongholds. Rowed by Strangford’s own ‘weekend Norsemen’, they gather on Saturdays and Sundays to remember a simpler life. “I thought they’d be far more earnest about it, but they were very into what they do, and they had a sense of humour about it too,” McSweeney recalls.

Although not an obvious way to tap into Strangford’s Viking heritage, McSweeney muses that “it’s a very beautiful thing. As Olaf [the organiser of the weekend Norsemen] said, we live in a society where you’re never not on call and so to sort of go into a hut and pretend you’re a Viking for a bit, well, there are worse ways to spend your weekend,” she says. And soon visitors to the area can do so too, as the weekend Norsemen plan to open the encampment to the public.

siobhan mcsweeney northern ireland - Waddell Media
siobhan mcsweeney northern ireland - Waddell Media

Exploring Northern Ireland with Siobhán McSweeney is on tonight on More 4, 9pm