Peter Sheridan, Playwright, screenwriter and director and Fair City actress Neilí Conroy join Oliver to talk about a new tour of Peter's play Philo and the Dublin woman who inspired the character. Listen back above.

Philo has a loud gravelly voice, a big heart and a rose tatoo. Her kids have been taken into care and she wants to talk about it. She works as a bingo caller and a cook in the local convent near her home in Dublin's East Wall, where she meets Sister Rosaleen; a buttoned-up nun with a past who's having a religious crisis. The women become firm friends; leading to hilarity and unexpected epiphanies. That's the basis of Peter Sheridan's play Philo which returns for a new Dublin tour with Fair City star and fellow East Wall native Neilí Conroy in the title role. The pair joined Oliver Callan to chat about the show, the early days of Fair City and much more.

Both Neilí and Peter knew Florrie Cunningham - the woman who inspired the character of Philo. You couldn’t meet Florrie and not remember her, Peter says:

"She had that presence immediately. She was a larger than life personality. She was in your face, she just talked, she said things; inappropriate things sometimes. But she was a force of nature – an absolute force of nature. I will never forget her till the day I die."

Back in 1982, Peter got funding to start a theatre company in Dublin’s north inner city. The scheme was for young people, but Peter wanted to open it up to a older people too; particularly older women, who he says were "where it's at" in that community. Florrie didn’t know Peter was open to bending the rules if it would benefit the company, and she came to the audition claiming that her daughter Rebecca wanted to sign up. It soon became clear which of the two of them had a burning ambition to act, so after an awkward few minutes, Peter decided it was time to give up the pretence:

"After the 10 minutes, I said would you be interested? 'I thought you'd never ask me!' she said - the daughter was there for the cover."

Florrie had a huge stage presence and Peter recalls her playing Dicey Riley, a resident of Dublin’s red light district known as the ‘Monto’. He says it was an unforgettable performance:

"She had this scene where she drank meths. Because a lot of the girls when they got really bad, they would be on the drink. But then they would be on the methylated spirits and they’d be going crazy; kinda going mad. She had this death scene in a bed, where she had to go mad and die and it was terrifying. She was terrifying."

Neilí, who plays Sharon Collins in Fair City, played Philo in the original production in October 2021 at the Five Lamps Arts Festival. The new Dublin tour starts in the Seán O’Casey Theatre in East Wall, right in the heart of the community that inspired it; and it gives people another chance see the show which opened when audiences were still shy of crowds due to Covid.

Neilí says there's a particular challenge in playing someone whose family you know and who lived in the area you grew up. She tells Oliver the real Florrie could be intimidating at first:

"I remember her denim skirts and the jackets and loads of tatoos. She’s the kind of person that you'd be afraid of your life of, but she was probably very soft, you know?"

There’s no point over-thinking it, the Fair City star says. Neilí says she doesn’t want to insult anyone and she wants to do the character justice, but she’s not obsessing about it either:

"All you can do as an actor is get the essence of the person and then, you’re not the person really, you're not imitating the person, you have to make it your own as well."

According to Peter Sheridan, Neilí has absolutely nailed it. There were several different readings of the character over the years with different people, but he says everything fell into place once he got Neilí Conroy on board:

"As soon as Neilí read it, the nuance was there. It was just like - oh my God, this is really exciting, because she's doing something that actors would normally find it difficult to do, which is the feeling that underneath her nails, is the dirt from the character - just like, fantastic, brilliant reality."

Something very special happened the first time the play was performed in front of an audience in East Wall, Peter says. He says Neilí's voice and presence seemed to bring Florrie (who died in 2015) back to life:

"The audience were shouting up at her immediately she walked on. People were saying things to her as if she could respond to them and have a conversation with them. That's also great - that's how audiences were in Shakespeare's day. They interacted with what was happening on stage. They shouted up at the actors."

Neilí says her own voice and accent differ quite a bit from Florrie’s – but she knows how to channel her essence when she’s playing Philo. Writing in a Dublin idiom and performing in Dublin accents is a source of pride, Peter says – for him, the actors and the community:

"That's part of the experience for the audience, that they're getting the real thing, that real sound of what it's like to listen to a great Dublin accent, and the pride behind it. Not apologising for how we speak, which is kind of how we were educated when I was smaller."

Philo is touring across Dublin between the April 18th and May 25th 2024, starting with the Seán O’Casey Theatre as part of the Five Lamps Arts Festival, the Civic Theatre, Axis Theatre and the Viking Theatre Clontarf.