Ruairi Conaghan’s Lies Where It Falls, which played at C Alto during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, will transfer to Finborough Theatre.
When offered the role of Player King in the Barbican’s Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Downton Abbey actor Ruairi Conaghan was unaware that Shakespeare’s evocative speeches would stir up repressed trauma, compounded by playing Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee a few years previously, and lead to a catastrophic physical and mental breakdown.
Fifty years ago in 1974, an eight-year-old Ruairi Conaghan lost his uncle, Judge Rory Conaghan, murdered by an IRA gunman disguised as a postman. He was shot dead on his doorstep whilst holding his nine-year-old daughter’s hand. Ten years later in 1984, the IRA man Patrick Magee attempted to assassinate Margaret Thatcher by planting a bomb in the Brighton Grand Hotel, killing five people. In Lies Where It Falls, Ruairi recounts the experience of meeting and playing Patrick Magee in controversial play The Bombing of the Grand Hotel, and how the toll of playing the man became part of a growing internal trauma which eventually materialised in a physical and mental collapse that threatened his life. Lies Where It Falls demonstrates the pervasiveness of trauma, the healing powers of theatre, and the legacy of The Troubles on the 40th anniversary of the Brighton Bombing.
Ruairi Conaghan is an actor from Belfast known most recently for his roles as David Trimble in Owen McCafferty’s Agreement (Lyric Theatre Belfast, The Irish Arts Center, New York and Gate Theatre Dublin), Kiernan Branson in season 3 of Downton Abbey, and various roles at the Donmar, the Bush, Royal Court and on Broadway and the West End. His performance in Hamlet can be found on Amazon. Lies Where It Falls premiered at the Lyric Theatre Belfast and played at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024.
The murder of Judge Conaghan and magistrate Martin McBurney on the same day were two of the earliest shootings of Catholic judges in an IRA campaign which continued for 20 years. The shootings rocked the nation and were immortalised in a poem by Michael Longley CBE. Marking the 50th anniversary of his murder, his daughters said they were committed to seeking justice. No one has been held accountable for Judge Conaghan’s death.
Ruairi Conaghan said, “Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland Legacy Act passed in May of this year and was intended to prevent any further prosecutions of those responsible for crimes committed during The Troubles and to stop any formal investigations, the theory being that the story is finished – we should now just forget all about it. But you can’t just forget trauma. It grips hard. There’s a generation of people still silently burning with anger and pain. If there will be no formal means to pursue truth and justice, then stories become everything. Those stories must be told. No one chooses this trauma.”
