BRIAN JAMES O’SULLIVAN
It was the tape sent by his auntie from Australia that changed everything for young Brian O’sullivan, back in the mid1990s. The tape was full of archetypal Australian songs; it was his uncanny ability to capture the Australian accent and intonation that launched him towards a professional show business career.
O’sullivan was born in Glasgow in 1987, and his family – just him, his mum and his Donegal-born Dad – lived first in Drumchapel, and then in more upmarket Bearsden. It was at East Kilbride ice rink, though, that O’sullivan attended an audition for a short-lived 1990s talent show hosted by Michael Barrymore; and in a trice, still aged only eight, he was travelling to London to appear on the show, had found an agent, and won the role of Oliver in Cameron Mackintosh’s iconic 1990s production of the musical, which played for three years at the London Palladium.
It was an astonishing show business experience at such an early age; and ever since, almost without pause, O’sullivan has been writing musicals and comedy sketches and songs and performing them at every available opportunity.
O’sullivan also had an interest, since childhood, in Irish traditional dance and music, and he toured the world for several years with an Irish band, before finding a theatrical home at A Play, A Pie And A Pint in Glasgow. Soon after, he was headhunted to join the National Theatre of Scotland company; and in the last halfdecade, he has built up an ever more impressive reputation as a writer, performer, songwriter and musical director.
In this extract from O’sullivan’s as yet unperformed play about two characters, Janice muses on her own mother’s d eferential relationship with the local priest; and by implication, on how attitudes to religion have changed, in Glasgow and beyond, over the p ast half century.
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