KILLIAN KICKS OFF HIS KINKY BOOTS AND HEADS FOR HOME
KILLIAN DONNELLY is getting ready for a change of footwear: he’s swapping his kinky boots for a pair of cowboy boots.
Donnelly — one of the stars of the award-winning musical Kinky Boots — is heading home to his native Ireland to star in Frank McGuinness’s new play: a family drama called Donegal.
It’s about Jackie Day, a country-and-western big shot who returns from America to help his down-on-their-luck family in southern Ireland.
‘He goes away from Ireland to the States and becomes a big singer-songwriter,’ Donnelly told me. ‘I think of him as having the kind of success that someone like Gary Barlow has.
‘His mother used to sell out stadiums, but now she’s reduced to playing smaller venues that hold 50, 60 people, if she’s lucky. The family want Jackie to get them out of debt.’
The drama, which is full of dark humour, will run in Dublin’s legendary Abbey Theatre from October 6 until November 19.
‘Frank McGuinness and the Abbey Theatre? No contest! I said I’d sweep the stage, just to be inside the Abbey,’ said Donnelly.
He will give his final performance in Kinky Boots — as Charlie Price, a young man who inherits his father’s failing shoe factory and determines to save it — on August 13.
A few days later, he’ll be back in Ireland rehearsing Donegal with director Conall Morrison and the rest of the cast.
It’s a major change of pace for the actor, who has become one of a handful of ‘go-to’ musical theatre leading men, after opening the West End productions of The Commitments, Memphis and Kinky Boots. He has also appeared in Les Miserables, Phantom Of The Opera and Billy Elliot.
McGuinness saw him in Memphis — and then wrote Donegal with him in mind. Donnelly joked that he had been offered the ‘Killian Donnelly part’.
Strictly speaking, Donegal isn’t a musical. It’s more of a play, with music. McGuinness, who likes a country-and-western tune, has written some numbers with Kevin Doherty, who performs with the band Four Men And A Dog.
‘I was asked: “Do you play guitar? Do you play piano?” “Yes, yes,” I told them,’ said Donnelly, who will spend a lot of time with the creative team and cast, figuring out how to make the songs work in the play.
Country music is huge in Ireland. ‘John Denver and Garth Brooks go down a treat there,’ the actor told me. It will be grand to see him do a more dramatic piece; and great to see him working with a playwright of McGuinness’s stature.
His haunting 1986 prize-winning play Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme will run at the Abbey just before Donegal, from August 6. There’s already chatter about Donegal marching to the West End — and elsewhere.