Iconic photographs give this new musical play its title: a crouching priest waves a bloodstained white handkerchief as he moves along a city street, past armed soldiers, followed by men bearing a body in their arms. The priest is Father Edward Daly, the city is Derry, the body is 17-year-old John (“Jackie”) Duddy; the date is 30 January 1972, known since as Bloody Sunday. On that day, unarmed civil rights marchers, protesting against internment without trial, were shot at by British soldiers: 13 were killed; 15 wounded.
The events of Bloody Sunday have been crafted into drama by composer Brian O’Doherty and playwright Liam Campbell (who died on 20 December last year, just before it went in to rehearsal). They are played out for us by a 34-strong cast of local professional and community actors, accompanied by a 12-strong orchestra, in the symbolically charged setting of the Guildhall, the intended destination never reached by the marchers.
On opening night, families of those who lost their lives are in the audience. Their past is brought into our present via the spirit of William McKinney (a finely measured performance from Warren McCook). Returning to the site where he fell, he relives his final hours. Boundaries between past and present blur: William addresses the audience directly; he and others come to sit among us, in the aisles. Under Kieran Griffiths’s direction, scenes flow, swift-paced, over, around and under the raised traverse stage bisecting the hall (designer: Ciaran Bagnall). The actors range easily through performance styles: intimate naturalism; rough comedy; epic monumentality. Tone changes are enhanced by musical shifts of emphasis from strings to percussion, also by movement transitions – Nadine Hegarty choreographs – between life-affirming, soldier-defying dances and tragedy-enhancing, death-dealt stillness.
Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the production only touches on the two official reports into army actions that day; it does not mention army killings leading up to it, nor IRA killings afterwards. A little more context here would be useful. That said, this performance for, by and about the people of Derry connects powerfully to wider experiences of loss and injustice. We see this, for instance, in William’s explaining, to his anxious fiancee, Elizabeth (perfectly pitched Sharon Duffy), why he feels he must join the march: “I won’t have done enough until the likes of you and me are not treated like second-class citizens in our own land… As Martin Luther King said, ‘We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream’.” Site-specific? Yes! But with themes that touch us all.
The White Handkerchief is at the Guildhall, Derry until 5 February and available online until 9 February
