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Nick Danan on St Nicholas at the Omnibus
This Christmas-tide you’ll surely be expecting to see Old Saint Nick showing up around the theatre scene everywhere. However, Strange Fish Theatre Company’s alternative seasonal offering, St Nicholas at the Omnibus Theatre, appears to offer something significantly different… We spoke to award-winning actor Nick Danan about his role in this play, which is definitely not a traditional Christmas show!
Hi Nick! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us about what promises to be rather an extraordinary show for the Christmas season. To begin with, what can you tell us about the plot of St Nicholas?
Hi Mary, good to talk to you. St Nicholas is about a jaded Dublin theatre critic who falls for a beautiful young actress. He pursues her to London and makes a total fool of himself, gets drunk, falls asleep in Crystal Palace Park and ends up meeting a vampire! The vampire offers him a new life-his part of the bargain is to help him and his vampire coven feed their bloodlust.
The script is by Conor McPherson, who is surely one of Ireland’s finest every playwrights, renowned for evocative, edgy work. How does the production lean in to his rather dark storytelling?
He is indeed! Conor has been very supportive of this production and we’re very grateful to him and his agent. There is obviously a strong supernatural element to this story, which is something Conor has in a number of his other plays. Such as The Weir and Shining City.
You actually won a best actor award for this role at the Buxton Fringe in 2023 – congratulations! From one tormented critic to another, what is it about the character that spoke to you in the first place and made you want to take it on?
Within this extraordinary yarn about drunken shenanigans and sinister vampires is a beautiful exploration of what it means to be human. A man who never questioned how he lived his life is forced to face his own inner demons and strive for redemption. The journey he goes on is incredible and the complicated, nuanced nature of his character is catnip for an actor.
You’ll be working in the delightfully intimate Omnibus Theatre. Can you tell us a bit about the design for the show in this space?
The set is evocative of those wonderful old Edwardian theatres – lots of red velvet and that kind of thing. The intimacy of Omnibus is an absolute gift for this play as it leans heavily into the Irish Seanchaí tradition, which is an Irish storyteller. The configuration of the space allows me to keep things very natural and really draw people into the story.
Can you talk a bit about the challenge of performing an intense monologue live on stage, particularly in comparison to your work as a TV and film actor?
I’ve been having the most wonderful time over the last three months shooting a new show for Channel 5 called The Puzzle Lady. The most obvious thing to say about the difference between TV and theatre is that if you make a mistake when filming you get to have another go! There’s no such luxury in theatre. There’s something very comforting about being surrounded by lights, a camera, mics and a crew: it makes me feel cocooned. Everyone is there to help me do my job. In this play it’s just me and the audience – a collection of unique individuals who will all have their own personal responses to what is happening on stage. I have to say, I love it though. Having that direct relationship with an audience is like nothing else.
This is not specifically a Christmas tale, but does putting the play on at this wintry time of year add anything to it? Is it more universally relevant?
There has been something of a tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas – A Christmas Carol being an obvious example. When it’s cold and dark I think people love to gather somewhere warm and tells spooky stories about what might be lurking outside in the dark.
How are you hoping the audience will feel after the performance?
You know that buzz you get when you’ve been lost in a great story? That!
Thanks very much to Nick for taking the time to tell us about this compellingly creepy production!
St Nicholas runs at Omnibus Theatre from 17th – 24th December and 27th December – 5th January. Further information and booking details can be found here and you can expect a critical review from ET soon!
