ine of duty star Adrian Dunbar has predicted a bright future for a literary festival in his hometown after it returned with a bang after the pandemic.
Dunbar, known for his role as Superintendent Ted Hastings in the police drama, was involved in the Happy Days festival in Enniskillen to celebrate the work of the Nobel laureate playwright. Samuel Beckett since its inception in 2012.
This year he directed one of Beckett’s plays set amid ancient monastic ruins on the island of Devenish on the edge of the lakeside town of Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
Beckett spent some of his formative years in Enniskillen between 1920 and 1923 as a boarding school at Portora Royal Grammar School.
Fifty years earlier, one of Ireland’s literary greats, Oscar Wildealso attended Portora, which is now known as Enniskillen Royal Grammar School.
Growing up in Enniskillen, Dunbar joined stage and screen actors from Ireland and beyond for the Beckett International Festival’s first outing since 2019.
“The city is a really good size for a festival,” the 63-year-old told PA news agency.
“It has some great places to eat. It has some really interesting buildings where we can manage things and is very proud of its connections to Beckett, and of course Wilde.
“My hope is that it will sustain itself, that people from all over the world will continue to come as they do.
“It’s been 10 years, it’s survived Covid, a lot of things haven’t survived that period, but the festival is back and it’s back and the lovers are back, the Beckett lovers are back, the people engaged in Sam’s work are back and they come from everywhere again.
“They’re going to be from America and they’re going to be coming from Australia and Japan and all of Europe, and therefore, you know, I hope that will support it, but I also wish more people from Belfast and Derry and Dublin and Sligo, I would like more people from Ireland to join the festival as well.”
Dunbar said he first became involved with Beckett’s work when he saw a performance of the play Waiting For Godot in 1980, but said his involvement with the festival was the trigger that sparked a deep passion for his work.
“A literary festival around Samuel Beckett is an absolute no-brainer,” he said.
“He is such an exemplary person in so many ways. He is a bit of a hero of ours and so it was a good idea to find out and of course to promote the city and this part of the world.
“I am very proud to be from Enniskillen. This was an incredible place to grow up as a kid with the rivers and the lakes, the fishing, the boats, it’s kind of Huckleberry Finn stuff.
“And so I’m always very, very happy to promote the city.”
In addition to Ohio Impromptu directed by Dunbar on Devenish Island, the five-day festival also hosted performances in a variety of other offbeat settings, including underground in the Marble Arch Caves.
Actors and artists Toby JonesDame Sarah Connolly, Fleur Barron, Alex Murphy and Liam O Maonlai were among the contestants.
Sean Doran, the artistic director of Happy Days, said the challenge of getting funding to set up the festival made its success all the more satisfying.
“It’s a great shock and surprise that it’s real and people are showing up,” he said.
“We’ve had so many wonderful sold-out shows and they’re just coming back, you see familiar faces, you see a lot of new faces too.
“We go from year to year. It’s a very, very underfunded festival and we’re sort of scraping the funding together. That’s why it’s more rewarding to somehow cross the line with that, and every year it’s a struggle to do that, but we’re so rewarded by the public’s reactions – that’s what takes us to the next year. We would like to get bigger and better.
“I think it’s so important in our place, after the problems, to have this kind of equality of activity, that people here on the ground don’t have to go to London, New York, Pariswherever it is, to see great artists and great actors.”
Mr Doran pointed to the growth of the Galway International Arts Festival as inspiration for what the Beckett Festival could eventually become.
“The business community here in Enniskillen absolutely loves the festival coming back because of the kind of cultural tourists that come in who are so interested in the place and buy the shops and other things and spend time and so on,” he said.
“So I think there’s huge potential for it and I’d love to see, you know, the way the Galway International Arts Festival started in 1985 and look what it’s become.”