Spoken Stories 2: Creatures of the Earth is a brand-new collection of 12 themed radio half-hour stories on RTÉ Radio 1, commissioned by RTÉ Arts and Culture from eminent Irish and Irish-based writers.
The stories take as their starting point Creatures of the Earth, the title of a story by John McGahern, and also the title of the final collection of his stories to be published in his lifetime. The actors reading these stories meet the acclaim of their authors, both reflecting the admiration and esteem in which McGahern's work continues to be held.
RTÉ's critically successful Spoken Stories 1: Independence, first broadcast in 2021, considered through fiction what 'independence' could mean a hundred years after Ireland's own War of Independence. John McGahern often referred to himself as coming from the first generation born into independent Ireland - in this way, the new round of Spoken Stories offer an natural expansion to their predecessors.
In his preface to his collection Creatures of the Earth, John McGahern wrote how '…The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need to distance'. These new stories, like McGahern's original tales, with minor and catastrophic disruptions to life at their heart, wonderfully make this thought their own, with compelling results. Complicated love, histories that bind us, family dynamics, personal freedoms, new beginnings and redemption drive them.
Their atmospheric settings include the quiet cul-de-sac of a housing estate, a rented cottage in a boggy townland, a mobile home in a small level field at the edge of a square of forestry, an all-girls boarding school in Australia, a concrete backyard and the haunted land it occupies, a subterranean cave nowhere exactly and a lakeside sauna in Finland and the hidden pathways in nature which meant the world to John McGahern.
Donal Ryan’s story Bride is first up in the series. It is about a man who has been cast out from his own life. David is broken, barely holding up in his rented lake cottage, miles from the home in a quiet cul-de-sac, he made with his wife who left him, taking with her their child. Then Bride, a reader of palms, comes knocking at his door and crosses his threshold. Though realizing he has been warned about her, he is enthralled by where she might bring him, and where he might find peace.
Bride is read by actor Daryl McCormack, bringing together the talents of writer Ryan and actor McCormack, both from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, for the first time.
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Listen: Daryl McCormack reads Bride by Donal Ryan, broadcasting on Sunday 16th October
Australian-born actor and Lir Academy graduate Emma Dargan-Reid, reads Near Adelaide by Christine Dwyer Hickey. The story is set in Australia; that Dargan-Reid’s parents emigrated there from Ireland brings poignancy to this pairing, as the story relates so much to family, absence and distance.
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Listen: Emma Dargan-Reid reads Near Adelaide by Christine Dwyer Hickey, broadcasting on Sunday 23rd October
Lisa McInerney’s story is Law of the Instrument, read by Stephen O’Leary. "What I react to in John McGahern’s stories, "she says, "like those in Creatures of the Earth, is the sense of fullness in the Irish everyday by which I mean the good, the bad and the ugly, specifically McGahern’s recognition of the kind of brusque horror, what was hopeless and inevitable and cyclical which adds to a sense of mythic to the mundane. With Law of the Instrument, I wanted to speak to that sense of bitter drama, a sort of eternal battle between self and soil and family. Here a young man has dug his heels into an incessant conflict with his father, stopping himself from leaving because he is so committed to that conflict."
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Listen: Stephen O’Leary reads Law of the Instrument by Lisa McInerney, broadcasting Sunday 30th October
Ní Anluain says Charlene McKenna’s voice immediately came to mind when she read the first draft of Belinda McKeon’s story Tacaguma and so was more thrilled than surprised then to see the pair of them heads bent when in studio together, so naturally and animatedly discussing the birthing of a calf, something that occurs in the story.
Tacaguma tells a tale of two sisters: Kate, grappling with landing a direction for her life, and Claire, a trailblazing vet, always kind of loathed one another. Reared on a farm these days they live on either side of the Atlantic and have aging parents. Their father had stroke, and their mother is on a long-planned carer’s weekend away. But the business of the farm doesn’t stand still nor do relations between the sisters as they confront what happens next...
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Listen: Charlene McKenna reads Tacaguma by Belinda McKeon, broadcasting 6th November
Other writers and actors whose work features in future episodes include Billy O’Callaghan, Pat Shortt, Louise O’Neill, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, Colm Ó Ceallacháin, Evgeny Shtorn, Colin Walsh, Caoilinn Hughes and Louise Kennedy. The series has been commissioned by RTÉ Arts and Culture, with the support of BAI.
Spoken Stories producer Clíodhna Ní Anluain says: 'It is fascinating when having commissioned writers to begin out from a common thought for a story, what arrives in is so various in shape, in tone, in intention and in what lingers in the mind".
A longtime admirer of John McGahern's writing, Ní Anluain and worked with the Leitrim author (who passed away in 2006) on a number of projects. "It is terrific", she says, "to be met with enthusiasm and passionate reaction, first from the writers accepting the invitation to contribute, and then from the actors recording their work, on a project with a direct link with a giant like John McGahern.’
Spoken Stories 2: Creatures of the Earth begins at 7.30pm on Sunday 16th October and is also available as a podcast - listen to more from Spoken Stories here.
