Latest news with #EileenWalsh
Irish Post
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Eileen Walsh and Risteárd Cooper among stars who turned out for Dancing at Lughnasa opening night
ACTORS Eileen Walsh and Risteárd Cooper were among the stars who turned out for the opening night of Dancing at Lughnasa in Dublin this week. The Gate Theatre production of Brien Friel's classic is running at the 3Olympia Theatre until July 26. It is the first time a Gate Theatre production has transferred to the 3Olympia in 35 years. The last show to do so was a version of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock in 1990. Eileen Walsh attended the production of Brian Friel's masterpiece Dancing at Lughnasa at 3Olympia Theatre (Pics: Rolling News) "We are thrilled to rekindle our historic relationship with the Olympia Theatre", said Gate Theatre Executive Director Colm O'Callaghan ahead of the show's opening. "Our strategic vision is that of an 'Open Gate' where everyone has access to great theatre, and playing to 3Olympia's summer audiences is a great way to help us realise this and to expand our audience." Risteard Cooper pictured with daughters Sadhbh and Nora at the opening night O'Callaghan added: "Collaborating with 3Olympia also means that our own stage is available to deliver on other key strategic goals such as premiering contemporary international plays." This week stars were out in force to watch the show, including Cork native Walsh, Dublin born Cooper, costume designer Joan Bergin and television presenter Maia Dunphy. TV presenter Maia Dunphy attended the opening night performance The critically acclaimed production is directed by Caroline Byrne, with a cast that features Lauren Farrell, Peter Gowen and Pauline Hutton. Set in Friel's fictional town of Ballybeg in Donegal in 1936, the story follows the lives of the five Mundy sisters. The award-winning costume designer Joan Bergin was also in attendance The play originally premiered in 1990 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. A revival at the National Theatre in London in 2023 featured Ardal O'Hanlon and Siobhán McSweeney.
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Second Woman review: Eileen Walsh's 24-hour performance reveals something astonishing about us
The Second Woman Cork Opera House ★★★★★ I go into Cork Opera House to see The Second Woman braced for a punishing experience. The premise is that Eileen Walsh performs the same break-up scene on a loop for 24 hours, with 100 different men, mostly nonactors selected through a public call-out. They've read the script but haven't rehearsed it. This might suggest the play is trying to say that our entrapment in gendered roles protects us from the frightening – and potentially redemptive – experience of real intimacy. That we cast others in tired romantic scripts, re-enacting familiar patterns that obscure our ability to truly see one another. Fear of love disguised as its performance. [ Eileen Walsh: Women actors 'are like avocados. You're nearly ready, nearly ready - then you're ripe, then you've gone off' Opens in new window ] Or perhaps it's making a broader point, not just about gender but about the compulsions of private suffering: how we return, again and again, to the primal scene of our own hurt, condemned to repeat it without ever resolving or transcending it. In short, I expect something boring and depressing. Endurance theatre may be admirable, but it's rarely much fun. READ MORE Happily, I am wrong. To begin with, The Second Woman, which is being staged as part of Cork Midsummer Festival , is incredibly stylish. Onstage is a glowing pink box with gauze walls, inside which sits a brightly lit livingroom with a neon sign and vintage wooden furniture. Walsh enters pushing a trolley of whiskey bottles and glasses. She's in a red dress and strappy heels, her hair platinum-blond and voluminous in a very Hollywood way. The whole aesthetic nods to John Cassavetes ' Opening Night – the source of the script – but also evokes films such as Paris, Texas and Mulholland Drive. More than any one film, though, it recalls the voyeurism of early reality dating shows such as Love Connection, where private loves and humiliations were first made public. A camera crew circles the gauze box, filming close-ups projected live on to a large screen, amplifying the cinematic, self-aware atmosphere. The Second Woman: Eileen Walsh during her 24-hour theatrical marathon. Photograph: Jed Niezgoda The Second Woman: Eileen Walsh during her 24-hour theatrical marathon. Photograph: Jed Niezgoda The Second Woman: Eileen Walsh during her 24-hour theatrical marathon. Photograph: Jed Niezgoda The structure of the piece, which is directed by its creators, Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, is simple: Walsh waits while melancholic piano music plays. A man arrives with takeaway. They share noodles, a drink, a song, a dance, and break up. He leaves, saying either 'I love you' or 'I never loved you.' The piano starts again. The scene resets. Far from being a bleak comment on the replaceability of romantic partners, what emerges is the astonishing range of human difference. The fixed script throws each man's interpretation into relief. Some play it angry, others earnest. The funniest ones go meta: 'Are we really doing this again?' Some guys are so sexy: tender and knowing and playful. Some guys are just assholes, spilling their noodles. Such is life. What truly shines is Walsh's intelligence, responsiveness and flexibility. She's up for anything, alive to each variation. She can switch from mischief to abjection in a blink. Repetition, counterintuitively, deepens. Attend to anything closely enough and it opens like a flower to the light. As John Cage said, 'If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If it's still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.'
Irish Independent
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Cork Midsummer Festival set to turn all the city ‘into a stage' in celebration of all things Rebel
Tickets are flying out the door according to the organisers, and they also added that this year's crop of talent has led to one of their busiest box offices in years. Running from June 13 to June 22, Cork city is turned into a stage for a celebration of live arts events that will appeal to each member of the family. Director of the Cork Midsummer Festival Lorraine Maye said the event is 'unique' in so far as it partners with various cultural organisations across the city. 'We work with all the city's cultural organisations, and we work with them to co-present a lot of the work, and a lot of things would not be possible without them. 'We work with a lot of businesses in the city and they become patrons or friends. 'They support us in so many different ways and we literally couldn't do this without them,' Ms Maye said. Whether your Midsummer Festival includes a 4am visit to Cork Opera House, a visit to the dazzling display of the Sun at St Fin Barre's Cathedral or an intimate experience of a musical ensemble at Triskel Arts Centre, there is something for everyone. The opening event will allow spectators to experience the Sun like never before at St Finn Barre's Cathedral. Helios is an invitation to explore the Sun up close through a huge, dazzling new artwork by world-renowned UK artist Luke Jerram. 'The opening event is Helios, a six-metre giant installation of the Sun that's going to be in St Fin Barres for people to see from the 9th of June right until the end of the festival. 'It is a great one for all the family to see and we are thrilled to bring it to Cork. We are co-commissioners of that,' Ms Maye said. Helios can be viewed from June 9. Another major event on the Midsummer Festival calendar is The Second Woman, which is a 24-hour performance and features Eileen Walsh act out the same scene for the duration of the show. 'The extraordinary Eileen Walsh will be the heart of the show and will be on stage for 24 hours performing the same scene over and over again with 100 different participants – all of them men. 'Some of them are actors but most of them are not and haven't been on stage before. 'People can engage with this in a number of different ways like a 24-hour tickets that gives them priority to come and go throughout the 24 hours or they can get a time ticket. 'We really recommend that people see the performance at various times of the day and the night because it's a completely different experience,' Ms Maye added. Throughout the festival, various events showcasing extraordinary Cork talents will be on offer, including the iconic Theatre for One booth. 'We will be using the city as a stage, which is something the festival does every year. 'The iconic Theatre for One booth is custom-made for one audience members and one actor at a time, and this year's theme is Made in Cork,' Ms Maye said. All the writers and actors involved with the Theatre for One are Leesiders, with some of the directors are also Rebels, and Ms Maye said the Theatre for One is a 'brilliant platform to showcase some extraordinary Cork talent.' The closing night will be especially memorable as seven giraffes will make their way down St Patrick's Street – well, kind of. 'For our closing event this year we are partnering with Cork City Council and the Open Streets Initiative for the biggest international spectacle that the city has seen for decades on St Patrick's Street. 'This is a group called Compagnie OFF from France, and their event Les Girafes: An Animal Operetta, will have seven giant giraffes coming down Patrick's Street on the final day of the festival,' Ms Maye concluded. For more information on Cork Midsummer Festival and to buy tickets, see:
Irish Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Eileen Walsh: Women actors ‘are like avocados. You're nearly ready, nearly ready - then you're ripe, then you've gone off'
What is the longest period of time you have sat in a venue watching a piece of theatre? Three hours? Four? Maybe six for some rare double or triple bill? Well, from 4pm on Saturday, June 14th to 4pm the following day, actor Eileen Walsh will be spending 24 hours on stage at the Cork Opera House , in a one-off performance of The Second Woman. This is an Irish premiere of the show, running during Cork Midsummer Festival , and a co-production with the Cork Opera House. It was originally created in 2017 by Australians Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, and has been performed in various cities around the world, including Sydney, New York and London. The show is described as 'a durational theatre experience', which sounds about right if you are a member of the audience, but how will the person holding everything together on stage for 24 hours manage to endure in this truly epic role? 'I've done 72 hours in labour,' Walsh says matter-of-factly, as she looks through the lunch menu at Dublin's College Green Hotel. 'You stay awake when you have to.' READ MORE The place is busy and noisy, and there is a particularly loud group sitting in the banquette behind me. As we start talking, I fret a little that my recorder won't pick up Walsh's voice amid the general din of cutlery and lunchtime clamour. But later, when I play back the recording, every word of hers is in there, perfectly clear. Of course it is; it's the voice of an actor, trained to enunciate and carry; to cut through all the noise. Walsh is in an orange singlet and black trouser suit, her dark hair in a ponytail. I know what age she is (48, I've done my research) but if I didn't, I couldn't tell by looking at her enviable chameleon face. The question of age is relevant because this theme is woven through The Second Woman, and her character of Virginia. 'Her age is never mentioned,' Walsh says. 'But it's very much about age and ageing, and about how men see us women.' Walsh has been acting for all of her adult life; in theatre, film and TV. Some of her recent appearances were opposite her old friend Cillian Murphy in the adaptation of Claire Keegan's novella, Small Things Like These ; and in Chris O'Dowd's streaming series Small Town, Big Story . The question is, how is she going to prepare for her latest, and longest, performance? 'I don't know if you can prepare for it, because it is all such an unknown,' she says. 'Part of the preparing for it is a bit like letting go, and trusting in the process. Even if you had done it before, it is an unknown because it would be 100 new situations and 100 new people.' Eileen Walsh: Being a mother is so difficult because you are being constantly pulled. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Walsh will not be alone on stage. Her character Virginia plays the same scene 100 times, each lasting seven minutes, each with a different male character, all called Marty, 100 Martys in total. In Cork, as in other cities where the show has been performed, the Martys are mostly amateurs, with some professionals in the mix. Will there be anyone famous? 'I think there are surprises,' Walsh says cautiously. 'I think it will be a mix of people I have worked with before, and who are interested in the theme of the project. But I don't know, and I won't know until I see them on stage on the night – if there are any. The last thing I want is to spend 24 hours wondering if Liam Neeson is coming.' Or indeed, Cillian Murphy. Or Chris O'Dowd. The core of the lines spoken by each character in each scene stays the same, but the scene itself has the possibility of opening in various different ways. The male character, by improvising, can choose what kind of relationship he wants to have with Virginia. None will have rehearsed with Walsh, so until each scene starts, she will have no idea which back story the person playing opposite her will choose. 'The opening of the scene is a window of opportunity for them to say something along the lines of 'As your brother,' if they don't want any romantic interaction. Or, 'As your dad,' or, 'As your friend.' So they can set their own parameters if they want to. Essentially it is all about relationships.' Stage directions allow for various kinds of action, and little pieces of physical exercise and respite for the actor. 'There's an opportunity to have a dance, there's an opportunity to have a drink, there's an opportunity to sit or to eat. You get an opportunity to sit down briefly, but other than that you are on the go. It's very physical. Then there is an opportunity at the end of each scene for the participant to choose to end the interaction in a positive or negative way. As much as my character is having a monumental breakdown, the men remain main characters in their lives all the time.' Walsh does the scene seven times, with some minutes at the end of each hour to reset the stage again. 'The props might have been moved, the drink might have been spilt. You stay on stage the whole time while that is happening, and then every few hours there's a comfort break, to have a pee, or fix make-up.' In The Second Woman Eileen Walsh plays the same scene 100 times, each lasting seven minutes, each with a different male character, all called Marty, 100 Martys in total. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw When the show was performed in London at the Young Vic in 2023, Walsh queued for three hours to watch a three-hour slot. 'We had to wait for people coming out to be able to buy tickets,' she explains. Walsh had no idea that two years later, she herself would be playing this extraordinary role. How do you rehearse for such a role? 'The rehearsal process is two weeks, and by day two you are working with four actors in turn. They will give me a flavour of what to do if someone freezes on the night, or if they are going on too long.' These actors won't be appearing in the performance; they will be trying to work through some of the different possible variations of the same seven-minute scene. But no element of preparation will come close to replicating what the actual night of performance will bring. Both Breckon and Randall will be coming over to Cork from Australia for the rehearsals, and to see her 24-hour performance. The Second Woman will be Cork-born Walsh's first major stage role in Ireland since returning from Britain last October. She lived there for some 30 years, first with husband Stuart McCaffer, and then as a family with their children, Tippi and Ethel. It's impossible to see acting as a life choice in Ireland now. How do you get a mortgage? Have kids? I don't know how young actors do it — Eileen Walsh 'Tippi is 19 and was born in Edinburgh.' (She's named for Tippi Hedren, now 95, who famously appeared in Hitchcock's The Birds; mother of Melanie Griffith, grandmother of Dakota Johnson.) 'I had watched The Birds, and thought Tippi was such a lovely name,' Walsh says. 'Ethel was born in London and she is 16. The girls were partly responsible for us moving back. Tippi was really interested in coming back and maybe doing drama school here. And we found a lovely school for Ethel. It kind of made sense.' When I ask if her children will be going to see the show, Walsh says her rehearsal time in Cork coincides with Ethel's Junior Cert. She thus won't be available at home for reassuring in-person hugs with her exam student. 'Being a mother is so difficult because you are being constantly pulled.' Tippi and Ethel have a better understanding and tolerance of parents being temporarily absent for work than most of their peers, having been raised in a household with two creative parents (McCaffer is a sculptor). After being away from Ireland for 30 years, both the paucity of available housing and the cost of it was a deep shock to Walsh when they returned. 'Looking for a rental for two adults and two kids, the costs were eye watering. Not only could we not get in the door for a lot of places, but the costs involved in trying to rent a two-bedroom flat while we were looking for a house were crazy. 'The costs are crippling. Dublin is laughing in the face of London when it comes to housing prices.' They did eventually find somewhere. 'We bought a wreck of a house we are desperately trying to do up.' Walsh wonders aloud how actors in Ireland today, especially in Dublin, are managing to develop a professional career while also finding affordable housing. 'I moved out of home at 17 and it was possible to pay your rent – and also have a great time. It is just not possible any more, and I don't know how younger versions of me are coping now. 'Financially it's having the result of turning acting into a middle-class profession, because what young kids from a working class background can afford to hire rehearsal space and to live within Dublin? It's impossible to see acting as a life choice in Ireland now. How do you get a mortgage? Have kids? I don't know how young actors do it. Besides, of course, moving away from Ireland.' Eileen Walsh: 'I moved out of home at 17 and it was possible to pay your rent and also have a great time ... I don't know how younger versions of me are coping now.' Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Back in 1996, when Walsh was still a student, she was cast in the role of Runt opposite Cillian Murphy as Pig in Enda Walsh's seminal then new play, Disco Pigs. (The two Walshes are not related.) The whole thing was a sensational success for all three of them, and burnished their names brightly. When the film version was cast a few years later, Murphy remained in the role of Pig, while Elaine Cassidy was given the role of Runt. Walsh said at the time she didn't even know the auditions were being held. It's a topic that has come up over and over again in interviews during the intervening years, the What If's around that casting. It's clear that Walsh was deeply hurt. She was 'heartbroken' at the decision to not cast her in this role that she had first brought to life. One can only imagine the strain it put on her friendship with Murphy at the time, for a start. It must also have been difficult for Elaine Cassidy to keep hearing publicly how something that was nothing to do with her had so affected the morale of another fellow actor. 'I feel like I've spoken a lot about that,' Walsh says now. 'It was a lesson for me very early on. And it wasn't the first or the last time I got bad news. And just because the role was yours doesn't mean it stays yours. They are heartbreaking things to learn. Or if someone says they want you for a job and then they change their mind, that's a f***ing killer as well. It's not something that gets better with age. It just burns more, because the opportunities are better, so the burn is greater.' [ From the archive: Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh on 'Disco Pigs': 'It was the ignorance of youth' Opens in new window ] At this point in our conversation, there are a number of other expletives scattered by Walsh, as if this old and sad wound has triggered some kind of latent, but still important, emotion. We talk for a while about how ageing in the acting profession – wherever one is located in the world – frequently works against women in a way it does not against men. 'I think women are constantly being told that for men, acting is a marathon and for women it's a sprint, because you have a short time to make an impact. You're like an avocado,' she says. I ask her to repeat that last word, unsure if I've heard it correctly. 'Avocado,' she says firmly. 'You're nearly ready, nearly ready – then you're ripe, then you've gone off. That's what you're made to feel like. Do it now, while you're lovely and young and your boobs are still upright, or whatever, While you're taut. And I think that is a total f***ing lie. It might be a marathon for men, but to remain in this business as a woman, it's like a decathlon. You have to f***ing go and go and go and it takes tenaciousness and being stubborn and strident to know your values. 'Men are allowed to feel old and to be seen like a fine wine, whereas I think for women it just takes so much boldness to stay in this profession as you age. And also to play parts where you don't have to always be the f***ing mother or the disappointed wife.' Eileen Walsh as Eileen Furlong in Small Things Like These. Photograph: Enda Bowe In the last year, Walsh has appeared in three significant screen productions: Small Things Like These; Say Nothing , the Disney + adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's book about the Troubles in Northern Ireland in which she plays Bridie Dolan, the aunt of Dolours and Marian Price who was blinded in a bomb-making accident; and Small Town, Big Story in the role of Catherine, a wheelchair user who is having a steamy affair with a colleague. In Small Things Like These, she co-stars with Oscar-winning Cillian Murphy, three decades on from Disco Pigs. 'A long circle completed,' she says. [ Small Things Like These: Cillian Murphy's performance is fiercely internalised in a film emblematic of a changing Ireland Opens in new window ] Claire Keegan's novella is set in 1985 in Co Wexford, and focuses on what happens when Bill Furlong, a fuel merchant, husband to Eileen Furlong and father of five daughters, discovers what is going on at the local convent, which is also a laundry that serves the town. Murphy – whom she calls Cill – contacted her when she was playing Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible at the National Theatre in London. He asked her to read the script for Small Things, which Enda Walsh had written. 'I know that Cill as producer was very intent on working with people he knows and loves and worked with previously and had kind of relationships with. The whole movie was spotted with friends and long-time collaborators.' After she had read the script, she went to meet director Tim Mielants. She and Murphy 'had to do something similar to a chemistry meet. That meeting was filmed when we worked on some scenes together.' Small Things Like These: Eileen Walsh as Eileen Furlong and Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong. Photograph: Enda Bowe/Lionsgate The two play the married couple in the movie, Bill and Eileen Furlong. 'It's a very tired relationship. They are a long time into the marriage, and they are very used to each other, so it's a no chemistry-chemistry meet, if that makes sense.' Walsh got the part. I remind her of what she has said earlier in the interview about being fed up of playing roles of mothers and disappointed wives, which one could see as a fair description of her role of Eileen Furlong. This role, Walsh makes clear, was very different from any kind of generic cliche of playing a mother or wife. 'Playing Eileen, she wasn't a put-upon wife, but was a mirror of what an awful lot of women were like at that time in Ireland. [ Irish Times readers pick Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These as the best Irish book of the 21st century Opens in new window ] 'Claire Keegan's writing is such a gift to any actor. Claire's story behind everybody is very dark. Nobody gets an easy ride with a Claire Keegan character, and that's a real draw to any actor. She doesn't soft soap anything. For me to play that character, to play Eileen, meant I saw so much of my own mother and the women that I grew up underneath, [women] I grew up looking up to. It was a hard time. They were trying to make money stretch very hard, at a time when dinners would have to be simple and very much planned to the last slice of bread. They were not women spouting rainbows.' As it happens, Walsh's next big upcoming role after the Cork Midsummer Festival will be that of Jocasta, Oedipus's mother, in Marina Carr's new play, The Boy. It will open at the Abbey in the autumn as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. She'll play a mother in this interpretation of a Greek myth, certainly, but again, no ordinary one. Rehearsals start in July. [ From the archive: Eileen Walsh: How I reconcile motherhood with playing Medea Opens in new window ] Meanwhile, back to her modern-day Greek marathon in Cork this month. Due to the length of the show, there are a variety of ticket types the public can avail of. You can buy a ticket for the entire 24 hours, and either stay at the venue for the whole time or leave and return. On return, you may have to queue again and wait for a seat to become free. Other tickets are being sold for scheduled time slots for a number of hours. If you choose to come for the 2am slot, for instance, you'll pay a bit less for your ticket. There will also be some tickets available at the door, although it's likely you'll have to queue. There will be pop-up food and drink venues in the foyer to provide sustenance. The Cork Opera House has a capacity of 1,000 seats. If those seats keep turning over a during the 24 hours, thousands of people will have an opportunity to see this remarkable highlight of Cork Midsummer Festival: truly a night like no other this year in Ireland.
Irish Independent
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Notions and necessities: From performance and art events to coffee roasting and personalised jewellery, it's all here
Midsummer's dream The Cork Midsummer Festival takes place from June 13 to 22, with a programme that mixes local with international artists. Eileen Walsh, pictured, will perform a 24-hour theatrical marathon in The Second Woman; Italian folk dancer Alessandro Sciarroni will perform Save the Last Dance For Me; performance artist Amanda Coogan has an immersive installation of seven furze (gorse) bushes; Irish visual artist Aideen Barry is in conversation with writer Sinéad Gleeson and Patrick McCabe has collaborated with musicians David Murphy and Michael Lightborne. LH For tickets, see
