“Coleridge’s epic poem is magnificently brought to life in John O’Mahony’s mesmerising account. He sets the scene, draws the characters, and takes the audience on a spell-binding journey.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s story of an epic sea journey, written in 1797, centres around the killing of a harmless sea-bird – the albatross. The havoc wreaked by this pointless act of vandalism explodes into one of the most popular and best loved poems in the English language.
In an age that is increasingly aware of humanity’s relationship to, and dependence upon, the environment, Coleridge’s ‘poem of the biosphere’ is undergoing a popular revival. And no wonder; it is a rollicking good yarn suffused with elements of the gothic and the downright ghostly… ‘an unforgettable story told in unforgettable language’.
"A tour de force by a master storyteller. Not to be missed”
John O’Mahony
John is an actor with four decades of performance experience across every branch of the media from film, television, radio, audio books, computer games and, in his first love, the theatre, from village halls to Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, the Old Vic, Regional Reps and London's West End. He has worked with a wide range of directors, companies and shows and tours regularly both in the UK and Ireland as well as internationally, at venues including the Gasteig in Munich and Megaron in Athens.
Credits include Bilbo Baggins and The Steward of Gondor In The Lord of the Rings (The Watermill Theatre), the two Dukes and Audrey in As You Like It at (Shakespeare’s Globe), Feste in Twelfth Night, Duncan and the Porter in Macbeth (Exeter Northcott), Stephano/ Gonzalo in The Tempest (Regent's Park), Van Helsing in Dracula, Niels Bohr In Copenhagen (The New Vic) Eddy in Fisherman's Friends (UK/Canada Tour), Keith/Chorus in This Restless House/The Oresteia (Edinburgh International Festival), Ahab in Moby Dick (International Tour), Father Rudden in Puckoon (Leicester Square Theatre and various tours).
John is the founder of The Hungry Grass, a project company devoted to creating and touring incisive new writing and the exploration of music-theatre form. Its first production PORK BELLIES was described as "one of the best pieces of theatre seen on the small-scale-circuit for a number of years" (Brighton Festival). The Hungry Grass is now bringing its latest production, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, to venues across the UK.
John’s work
As Niels Bohr in ‘Copenhagen’ at The New Vic, directed by James Dacre
With Mark Aspinall, working on the music for ‘The Lord of the Rings’
With the cast of ‘Fisherman’s Friends’, 2023
As Bilbo Baggins in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ for the Watermill Theatre
