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The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Riders to the Sea / Macbeth review – intense double bill linked by elemental forces of nature
Marking 50 years of exceptional theatre-making, Druid Theatre Company presents a double bill showcasing the artistry of this tight-knit ensemble and the excavatory lens of its artistic director, Garry Hynes. With a wealth of past productions to choose from, Hynes has paired JM Synge's stark one-act tragedy, Riders to the Sea, with Macbeth. While Synge's distilled miniature is almost eclipsed by what follows, the plays are linked by a focus on the elemental forces of nature and the shadow of death, with small, telling moments of visual continuity between them. In Synge's play, a grieving mother (Marie Mullen) has a premonition of the death at sea of her last surviving son (Marty Rea). The keening women and black-cloaked villagers' laments are later echoed in the guttural cries of the weird sisters, hooded figures from folk horror, who accost Macbeth (Rea) and Banquo (Rory Nolan) on the blasted heath. In both plays the veneer of Christianity is flimsy, while older, primal beliefs and fears hold sway. A statue of the crucified Christ is suspended on the back wall, not high enough to be safe from the predations of Rea's electrifying Macbeth, while a banquet becomes a twisted Last Supper where glasses are filled with blood-tainted water rather than wine. Mullen's compelling Lady Macbeth is transformed from her husband's goading, bullying accomplice into a wreck, terrified of his rampaging. While the age-gap between the two actors adds another layer to this relationship, at times closer to mother and son like Volumnia and Coriolanus, it is also completely credible. With the superb cast of 11 making darting entrances through hidden flaps in the walls of designer Francis O'Connor's stripped wooden set, the pace is unflagging, the menace unrelenting. For the audience seated on three sides, intensity is heightened by proximity to the performers. 'O full of scorpions is my mind,' Rea spits out, as Macbeth's mind and spirit curdle into something monstrous: bloodthirsty and unhinged. This is a medieval world, with shadowy forces and omens, candlelight and mud-covered floors, yet its portrayal of tyranny and the speed with which all civility falls away feels anything but remote. At Galway international arts festival until 26 July; then at Gaiety theatre, Dublin, for Dublin theatre festival, 25 September to 5 October
Irish Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Garry Hynes: ‘My wife was taken from me in the blink of an eye. My whole life's changed'
Have you mellowed, Garry? 'I probably have mellowed, to even be able to talk like this, although I had some instinct in this way when I was younger. You have to learn that theatre isn't everything. You have to learn no matter how good your ideas are, how enthusiastic you may be, other people won't necessarily see it like that. 'You have to lead. A lot of leadership is inspiring other people to feel confidence in themselves. Destroy that and you destroy everything.' Garry Hynes is talking about being a theatre director, and about learning to balance being demanding in rehearsal with working together. One of the founders, 50 years ago, of the acclaimed Druid theatre company, Hynes is at a very particular and tender juncture. A phenomenal director with a lifetime of achievement, she is raw with grief but in the midst of making theatre. This is, perhaps, a portrait of the artist aged 72. READ MORE We're talking after rehearsals for Druid's double bill of Macbeth and Riders to the Sea, which opens next week as part of Galway International Arts Festival . Well into the conversation, she has leant back in the hotel bar's booth, balancing her knees against the table. She seems mellow all right, as well as thoughtful and open. Engaged, enraged, emotional, heartsore, sardonic, funny, honest. Her beloved wife, Martha O'Neill , died on Easter Sunday, at the age of 64, and here she is just a couple of months later, in the thick of meaty rehearsal. 'I never realised the circumstances would be as they are,' she says. 'I had a decision to make, when it was clear Martha's illness was very, very serious. It was kind of clear from the beginning, but when it was inarguable I had to decide.' Macbeth and Riders to the Sea were planned long before illness struck. 'My concern was that I would be caring for Martha' now, when rehearsals were scheduled. 'And I couldn't rehearse and care for her properly. I couldn't. And nor could I assign her care to ... We thought she would be at home. Certainly in the early months, we never thought it was going to be that fast.' Hynes had to make a plan B in case she couldn't direct. She was conscious of the large investment in the double bill, and of all the others involved in it, of actors' contracts. 'People's commitment to it. Lives would be affected. At a certain stage you could not cancel it.' Beloved wife: Garry Hynes with Martha O'Neill on the day of their civil-partnership ceremony, in 2014. Photograph: Joe O'Shaughnessy But it was quicker than either of them expected. 'It was a very short time, six months from diagnosis to death.' It was cruel. 'Shocking. Beyond words.' [ Martha O'Neill obituary: Film and TV producer whose work spanned multiple genres Opens in new window ] In the rehearsal room 'you bring everything' to directing. 'I mean, I do. Not in terms of talking about it, but I bring everything in terms of, I'm thinking or feeling the experience.' Also, 'it's very odd', realising now that 'I was doing exactly the same thing after Jerome died'. Her brother Jerome Hynes, Druid's former general manager, who had gone on to become chief executive of Wexford Festival Opera and vice-chairman of the Arts Council , died suddenly in 2005, aged 45. Shortly afterwards, Druid revived an earlier Riders to the Sea, JM Synge's short tragedy, set on Inishmaan, about loss and the sea's relentless power. 'I remember [the scene] when the body of Bartley was brought in. That's when I actually lost it, briefly. I'm doing that again now. Just this afternoon.' Hynes was prepared for it, but she acknowledges that 'you always are emotionally vulnerable. I suppose you have to be emotionally vulnerable' to make theatre. You usually think of bereavement as sad and grieving, but actually it's a multiplicity of feelings, including fear and anger. It's such a complex thing — Garry Hynes 'I think for everybody who experiences grief at this level, you never stop thinking about the person. And you probably never stop experiencing their absence ... But in a rehearsal room you have to be present. So at the very least it's a distraction. Because I didn't necessarily know what it'd be like.' She talks about the way we're all trying to make sense of things. Making theatre involves forging connections – with yourself, with others and with audiences. 'You can't do a play as a piece of private psychology. It has to be a communal act.' Early days: Garry Hynes with Marie Mullen, her Druid cofounder, in the 1970s In 1975, after three years in the drama society at University College Galway, Marie Mullen , Mick Lally and Hynes founded Druid, where she has been artistic director for all but three years since. 'Obviously, you gain in confidence', but you 'gain relationships, and relationships are absolutely critical in making theatre'. 'I often wish I was something else. If I was a novelist I could write a book without having anybody. I can't do a single thing without at least one other person saying, 'Yes, I collaborate with you.' Collaboration is the beating heart of theatre. It's not theatre until somebody's watching.' Collaboration gives value and meaning. [ A Druid show and a sandwich for 50p: How Mick Lally, Marie Mullen and Garry Hynes began their theatre company 50 years ago Opens in new window ] Her brother was making a speech at Wexford Festival Opera when he died. He had a brain aneurysm. 'Jerome's death did feel catastrophic,' Hynes says. She recalls the shock of hearing the news in France with O'Neill. 'You usually think of bereavement as sad and grieving, but actually it's a multiplicity of feelings, including fear and anger. It's such a complex thing.' Circumstances also affect it. 'We were very close. To lose my brother, my collaborator, my best friend, in one fell swoop, was astonishing. But for Alma' – Alma Quinn, Jerome's wife – 'and their three boys, in their early teens, I knew it even then: my loss did not compare with theirs.' Family has been important, always. In Druid's early days 'my mother did box office. My brother Donal did lighting; Aedhmar ' – her sister – 'front of house. All volunteers. My mother said she was fired when they started paying people. She blamed Jerome rather than me.' Hynes laughs at the joking. 'It was extraordinary then that Feargal,' Jerome's son, 'worked in Druid in the same position', many years later. Hynes' relationship with her mother, Carmel, a Morley, 'while complex, was very close', and her death three years ago was hard. She was close to her aunt Phyll McCormack, from Ballaghaderreen, who died a few weeks before O'Neill. Such loss. 'It wasn't until a couple of months ago I experienced what it was like to be bereaved of your life partner, your wife.' Garry Hynes's brother Jerome, who was chief executive of Wexford Festival Opera when he died. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons They first met around 2002. O'Neill, a film producer, asked Hynes to join the board of the Irish Film Institute , which she chaired. They clicked immediately. 'I think both of us, there was a match.' It was gradual, getting to know each other. 'Quick drinks after meetings turned into longer drinks, then turned into, 'Sure, maybe we'll have dinner.'' They lived 10 minutes' walk from each other. Later they decided to live in Hynes' house off South Circular Road in Dublin, rebuilding it as a joint project. They became civil partners on December 18th, 2014. She was lucky in love. 'Which makes it so hard. We just worked. It was a very, very good relationship. From the beginning it was good, but it continued. We were very, very happy. Martha was seven years younger than me, but we had begun to plan for the next stage of our lives. 'Taken from me in the blink of an eye. It's all gone. My whole life's changed out of all recognition. I'm very lucky to have support among friends and family. I'm very lucky to have theatre as well.' The heartbreak is also because 'I just feel so sad for Martha. She enjoyed life. She enjoyed people. We always thought, because of the age difference, I was going to go first.' Rows of pictures they intended to hang but never got around to are lined up on the floor, a Mick O'Dea at the top of the stairs against a wall. 'I joked for years, 'Don't think you're just going to hang them for my wake. I want it done before I die.'' She's laughing, but there's pathos too. 'I'm going to get them hung. I want to just go,' Hynes says, gesturing upwards, 'see, I did it.' There's no consolation in Macbeth, but 'there is feeling. Macbeth goes from a life he thinks he understands to a life which splinters around him.' Hynes talks about difficult or challenging experiences. Not just death, 'although death, in its finality, is shocking. Absolutely shocking. Everything changes. The nature of time changes. Your experience of time. 'It's not being very, very sad and then gradually being less sad.' Grief 'alters everything. I'm only two months out from this. Hopefully you learn to live with the tragedy of it better. The tragedy is not just mine. The tragedy is hers, too, and her family's and friends'.' Druid is of Galway, and so is Hynes, though she's of Ballaghaderreen , a Rossie, too. But she's lived in Dublin since 1991, when she became artistic director of the Abbey Theatre , a role that many of its holders have found to be a fraught one. Hynes wanted a three-year contract – 'if it isn't working by the end of three years, I don't want to stay' – against some advice. 'Strategically it was a mistake,' she now says. [ Board governance at the heart of problem at the Abbey, says Garry Hynes Opens in new window ] Her tenure there was 'very difficult'. She recalls a photograph in an Abbey office of its old touring company. 'Very few people were different from those I was working with. The artistic director was the only person who was expected to change. I realised I was coming into a set-up with established ways of working. 'An artistic director is supposed to have the vision, but there's no way a single individual can provide everything in terms of leadership, administration, management, of a complex theatre. There was no facility, as there is now, to bring in a team.' She wanted at least an executive director, 'but the argument couldn't even be heard'. Such a set-up is common internationally; it happened at the Abbey only in 2015. Leaving the Abbey after three years, she saw her future life as a freelance director based in Dublin, where she'd bought her home. But in Druid, after its artistic director Maelíosa Stafford returned to Australia after three years, as planned, the board asked Hynes to take over temporarily, while seeking a successor. 'I said yes, with a lot of trepidation. My phrase then and my phrase now is, 'You can't step in the same water twice.' So here. They didn't manage to get rid of me since.' These are her sliding doors. 'If I hadn't gone back, my life would have been completely different in all sorts of ways. But if I hadn't left, I wouldn't have been able to go back to Druid. I couldn't have still been there.' Before leaving Druid, Hynes had begun wondering, 'Who needs who more? Do I need Druid to support my sense of myself as a director or does Druid need me? 'I had to get out, for all the right kinds of reasons. Then, when I did go, I began to see Druid from a distance, to understand the nature of Druid in a way I wouldn't have been able if I had just continued unbroken. There's no question about that. My tenure in the Abbey made my return to Druid possible. But I wouldn't have come back only for the board's difficulty, because I wouldn't have been asked.' Druid's early days: Garry Hynes with Paul O'Neill, Maelíosa Stafford and Marie Mullen in the 1970s Hynes has broken moulds, been part of a team making Druid a world power in theatre. Sometimes she has been an intimidating force. Is she bossy? She answers without hesitation. 'Yes.' Then elaborates. 'I would have been regarded as bossy. I'm sure nobody refers me like that now ,' she says, self-mockingly. 'As if.' 'I would have been called bossy in school. As director you have to be able to control the room, to control the nature of the process. Because who else can? That would have been called bossy then in young women. It wouldn't be called that now. I was very aware certain qualities I have wouldn't even be remarked on if I were male.' [ Druid at 50: Joe O'Shaughnessy's photographic history of the Galway theatre company Opens in new window ] She has high standards. 'The thing is, if you get it wrong, if you're too demanding, then you kill the very thing you're trying to control. You learn that from sore experience – very sore experience. If people don't understand, or feel intimidated or whatever, you're killing the very thing you're trying to create. It's a very, very long time to get the balance right. 'I knew even then when I made mistakes. I knew when I went over the top. I knew when, essentially, what would be described now as bullying. It wasn't intended, but it would have come across that way. And now you have to be aware of your behaviour. Aware in a way you would not necessarily have been then, especially when you're young and green. 'You have to be persuasive. If I ask an actor to move in a particular direction, and the actor thinks that's not a good idea, it'll never be a good idea. 'Unless I persuade the actor it's a good idea, it won't be a good idea, because he or she's the one who has to do it. It's not an army. You can't habituate people to certain action.' She means the way armies have to deliberately drain people of individual responses and so, say, be prepared go over the top to certain death in trench warfare. 'Take that from an actor, you take the light from them. Or anybody who's working with you – designer, technician, whatever. 'And, like everybody else, I've made mistakes. I know that. I would have known it at the time, which doesn't necessarily mean I was able to ... You just get a little bit of wisdom and experience. Once you grow up you learn, or you have to learn, compassion and understanding. 'There might be people out there who say, 'She said she had to learn compassion and understanding? Really? I wouldn't like to have seen you then.' But I wouldn't be here if I hadn't done a bit of growing up over a long period.' This is the mellowing. Theatre director Garry Hynes with her dog Ladeen after rehearsals for Macbeth at Wesley House, in Ranelagh. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times Though actors are her world, 'I could not walk onstage and pretend to be somebody else. Even being in the wings absolutely terrifies me.' In the early days she once played the maid in the Brian Friel play The Loves of Cass McGuire. 'I think I had to step up because I got on the wrong side of whoever was to do it, and she left.' Talking about actors, 'the first time I worked with an actor that was significantly older than me' was on A Whistle in the Dark, by Tom Murphy, at the Abbey in 1986. She asked Godfrey Quigley to play the chilling Dada. 'And boys, oh boys. Did I learn? Did I learn? Very fast. Managing Godfrey was a very serious challenge. I liked him. I can't say I loved him, but managing him ... He was terrifying.' Establishing authority was a challenge, 'because Godfrey was old school'. On the other hand, Hynes heard of a famous actress (she won't say who) observing, after Siobhán McKenna 's death, 'that I'd seen her off, as a result of doing Bailegangaire with Garry Hynes, that wicked witch of the west, that young whippersnapper'. Hynes says that 'working with Siobhán was fantastic. It was one of the happiest experiences. I've had a lot of happy experiences. I've had a lot of very unhappy experiences as well. But, God, working with Siobhán was great. She was witty. She was so intelligent. Tom had written the play for her. I mean, she was Mother Ireland.' I did increasingly find the gap between my public persona and my private persona difficult. Not only was I not out in public, but I wasn't really out to most of my circle. It stopped making sense — Garry Hynes She tells a great story about plans for McKenna to wear a wig, which she was generously having made herself. 'She had beautiful red hair, which she managed beautifully. It was a defining characteristic. It was very hard to do Bailegangaire the first time,' in 1985. 'A very big, challenging thing.' At tech rehearsal 'I looked at her and, 'That's not Mommo.'' She became convinced McKenna shouldn't wear the wig. 'She was affronted. 'She's in her 80s, and I'm only in my 60s. This is my hair! ' 'She kind of refused ... I was so utterly determined she wouldn't wear a wig. Now, you can go back and set this against learning how not to bully people, but, honest to God, I would have lain down on the ground and let her drive over me before she wore that wig on stage. And she eventually agreed. She was brilliant.' Druid: Siobhán McKenna in Bailegangaire Hynes' degree was in English and history. History was a passion, which chimes with writers and plays she has chosen. If not theatre, she might have continued with history. After college she became fascinated by 1930s Germany. 'How did Hitler become Hitler? How did he get away with it? Why did nobody shout stop, to quote the Irish journalist John Healy? Hitler was elected, which is kind of fascinating. It was only gradually he took over the machinery of the state. The comparisons are eerie and really terrifying.' She worries about the long term, not the world going up tomorrow. 'I won't be around.' The rise of the right, and the implications for the future, terrify her, 'being the lefty liberal that I am'. Hynes is a big reader. 'Funnily enough, nonfiction, history, politics.' Also newspapers. 'Guardian, Irish Times, New York Times, news magazines. Everything. I love long-form journalism.' In print. 'Martha used to read all her news online. She couldn't understand' all the paper. 'The other thing I fancied, but I would never have had brain for, was the law.' Years later, Hynes saw 'a commonality'. With law and history 'you're taking a series of established facts and you're trying to make connections between them and through them. See a narrative, understand why one thing follows another, follows another. Or understand what motivated people. That is one of the fascinations in my life.' She's 'a director of text'. She's dismissive of her early writing, saying her play Island Protected by a Bridge of Glass, from 1980, about Granuaile meeting Elizabeth I, was workshopped in rehearsal; it won a Fringe First at Edinburgh. 'It wasn't serious original writing at all. It wasn't a Tom Murphy I can assure you, or a Shakespeare.' Hynes came out in her early 30s. 'I wish I'd come out earlier. I do,' she says. 'To have had the courage to come out when you're in school or college still seems extraordinary to me.' The 1970s were different times but 'as a student from a middle-class background, I should have had the guts to come out earlier ... 'I did increasingly find the gap between my public persona and my private persona difficult. Not only was I not out in public, but I wasn't really out to most of my circle. It stopped making sense. 'I remember telling a couple of people who knew, 'I'm coming out. I can't take it any more.' I had started a new relationship. 'Stop the best-friends thing ...' Eventually you just realise it's a terrible contradiction between living with somebody you love, being their partner, and then hiding that from everybody else.' So she had something to tell Aedhmar, who is 14 years younger but 'like an older sister. 'What hopeless trouble have you got yourself into now?' I'm gay and I'm coming out. 'Thank God. I thought you were going to say you were pregnant.'' Hynes says she has been happy 'an awful lot of times – far too much for any one person'. But 'I worry all the time. Why did I pick a career that was the equivalent of sitting the Leaving Cert three or four times a year?' Does she believe in an afterlife? 'I wish I did more than I do. But I do absolutely believe in the persistence of somebody's spirit ... Once you exist and have connected with other people, the spirit persists. Martha's spirit will persist. Martha's spirit will be in me when I die.' Druid 's double bill of Riders to the Sea and Macbeth is in preview at the Mick Lally Theatre, Galway; it opens on Tuesday, July 15th, and runs until Saturday, July 26th, as part of Galway International Arts Festival ; all performances are sold out. Macbeth moves to the Gaiety, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival , from September 25th until October 5th
Irish Independent
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘Individual fate and collective misfortune,' why Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa endures, even ten years after his death
Brian Friel, who Garry Hynes called 'the father of modern Irish drama', once described himself as being one of the 'small men' of Irish literature. By this he meant one of the 'journalists and writer-teachers and writer-barristers and writer-civil-servants'.
Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
A Druid show and a sandwich for 50p: How Mick Lally, Marie Mullen and Garry Hynes began their theatre company 50 years ago
Half a century ago this week, in the summer of 1975, Druid theatre company was born in Galway . Founded by the director Garry Hynes and the actors Marie Mullen and Mick Lally , it started with a trio of plays in repertory in the city's Jesuit school hall. Today Druid describes itself as a touring company anchored in the west of Ireland and looking to the world. The three plays opening on July 3rd, 4th and 5th that first summer were JM Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (which Druid has made its own over the years), Kevin Laffan's It's a Two-Foot-Six-Inches-Above-the-Ground World and Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass McGuire. The fledgling company quoted Tennessee Williams in the programme: 'Make voyages. Attempt them. There is nothing else.' Druid's origin story recounts rehearsing the three plays daily, morning, afternoon and night, with the cast selling tickets on Shop Street. They had to set out chairs and tidy them away again for each performance, carrying in lights and props. Mick Lally was already a star in the city, acting at An Taibhdhearc, the national Irish-language theatre, while a young teacher at the local VEC. He had to ask for leave of absence from the VEC's head to join Hynes, Mullen and their group of young University of Galway graduates for the summer. That head was Hynes' father, handily enough. READ MORE Druid: Marie Mullen and Mick Lally rehearse The Playboy of the Western World in 1975 The company's name, evoking 'a weaver of dreams and spells', emerged from a crossword clue about the druid in the Asterix comic books. What self-belief they had. 'I wouldn't call it self-belief,' Hynes says, laughing. 'We were chancing our arm. It took energy and resolution, and a certain kind of complete innocence: 'We're going to found a professional theatre company.'' Notions. 'Not only were we not professional, but I had hardly seen professional theatre. I'd seen quite a bit of amateur theatre. And theatre off-off-Broadway,' during three summers in New York on J-1 visas. 'We were met with a sort of scepticism. 'What do ye think ye are doing, just fresh out of college, trying to establish a professional theatre?'' That first trio of plays, different in form, tone and setting, together showed 'how a century of apparent progress had left many features of Irish life unchanged', and that 'you can never really leave home, that even if you emigrate, you still have to take yourself with you', as Patrick Lonergan, professor of theatre at the University of Galway, puts it. The following year Druid produced 10 shows. From the start they built a strong audience in their home city. Lunchtime theatre – 50p for a show and a sandwich – was new: gamble on a short play, to see if you like the experience. They performed in the Fo'castle, a tiny function room behind the Coachman Hotel on Dominick Street, which they converted to a 47-seat theatre. Druid: Garry Hynes and Mick Lally in the 1970s Druid: the first auditorium under construction Eventually they secured an abandoned tea storehouse on Courthouse Lane from the McDonoghs, at a peppercorn rent; years later the Galway merchant family donated the building to Druid. The gang did the carpentry, plumbing and plastering themselves. The first production there was The Threepenny Opera, on May 19th, 1979. Decades of theatregoers recall uncomfortable bench seating with red foam cushioning, the black cavern morphing for each production, theatre posters in the tiny lobby, the hatch where you picked up tickets or queued in the hope of cancellations. It has been Druid's homeplace ever since. Druid: The Threepenny Opera. Photograph: Joe O'Shaughnessy In 1996, for the company's 21st birthday, Galway City Council renamed the pedestrian street that housed its base Druid Lane. The venue was redesigned by dePaor architects in 2009, reopening with Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert. Druid renamed it the Mick Lally Theatre in 2011; the actor had died a year earlier , at the age of 64. A timeline on Druid's website, to mark the 50 years, recalls multiple markers as the company built in ambition, skill and reputation, from national acclaim to international tours and multiple awards. As well as reimagining playwrights from Synge to Shakespeare to O'Casey to Beckett, the company forged long and fruitful relationships with living playwrights. After the 1978 premiere of Geraldine Aron's Bar and Ger, it produced several plays by the Galway-born writer. From the 1980s it worked with Tom Murphy, a special bond that culminated in its DruidMurphy season, in 2012. [ 'Tom Murphy would talk about the Irish institutions that drove him insane: the government, the church, the education system' Opens in new window ] Plucked from a script slush pile, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane was the inaugural show at Galway's renovated Town Hall Theatre, in 1996, then went to the West End of London. McDonagh's Leenane trilogy, a year later, was Druid's first 'event theatre', a marathon of plays in a day, and Beauty Queen on Broadway was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning four: for Mullen and for the late Anna Manahan and Tom Murphy; and for Hynes. Druid: Martin McDonagh, author of the Leenane trilogy Druid: Anna Manahan and Marie Mullen rehearse The Beauty Queen of Leenane Those relationships with writers culminated in startling theatrical, intellectual, performance-centred interrogations of their work: as well as DruidMurphy, there was DruidSynge in 2005, DruidShakespeare in 2015 and DruidO'Casey in 2023. Many of us who grew up in Galway remember Druid's early shows from our teenage years. The actors became familiar faces, transforming from show to show. Mullen, of course, always. Often Lally. Ray McBride, Maelíosa Stafford (who became Druid's artistic director for five years, in the early 1990s), Seán McGinley, Jane Brennan, Máirtín Jaimsie, Pat Leavy. You'd go to whatever they did next, because you knew it would be good, a stretch. Dial M for Murder, Ionesco's The Chairs, A Doll's House, Bernard Farrell's I Do Not Like Thee, Dr Fell. It was like an education in theatre, contemporary and classic, all genres, Irish and international. Going into the tiny Druid auditorium for an early Playboy of the Western World, in 1982, was like stepping into Pegeen Mike's pub, the thatch above, the scent of burning turf – literally – still in the air. That wasn't long after Mullen, in her 20s, did a ripe Mrs Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1985 we were in the midst of the pub intimacies in Murphy's Conversations on a Homecoming, which later spread wings to Dublin and abroad, and were feet from a wild-haired Siobhán McKenna in her final stage role, in Bailegangaire, which Murphy wrote for her. Druid: Pat Leavy and Maelíosa Stafford in Conversations on a Homecoming Druid: Siobhán McKenna in Bailegangaire From 1986 Druid performed internationally. In Galway it ventured beyond Druid Lane too. We recall Páraic Breathnach, who was building the set for an epic production of Murphy's play Famine in 1984 (and would soon co-found Macnas theatre company ), showing us around the western landscape they were creating on the floor of the Seapoint Ballroom in Salthill: hillocks, rocks, undulating ground, made from small, numbered pieces of plywood. That local audience seamlessly became national. But for those of us young and impressionable in the early years, we thought it was normal to have superlative, expansive, intimate, skilled theatre on the doorstep, opening the mind and heart. Druid has always worked as an ensemble, informally or formally, with actors and a consistent team of creatives and crew. It seems part of the chemistry onstage, and to forge a cohesiveness, a progression in the work they present. 'You could write a history of Druid through the history of about five ensembles,' Hynes says. This approach, the groups morphing and overlapping as time passes, allows a 'continuing conversation' in rehearsals. 'You don't go into a room starting from scratch all the time. You go into a room with these understandings of each other, liking for each other, love for each other, experience. [ Picture story: Druid Theatre prepares to mark 50 years with Shakespeare and Synge Opens in new window ] 'In theatre it's actually truly a privilege, and a huge benefit. Such a different way of working than normally people have to work in this business, where everything is ab initio, starting from the top all over again.' Over the past weeks, in rehearsals for Druid's double bill of Riders to the Sea and Macbeth, which it is staging as part of Galway International Arts Festival, Hynes has been struck by 'the absolute privilege it is to actually celebrate 50 years of life in the theatre, working consistently with a group of people – none more than Marie. 'To have been in rehearsal with Marie in 1975, and to be in a rehearsal room with her today, to have worked together consistently over that period. Then that being echoed by the long relationship with actors, whether Maelíosa Stafford or Seán McGinley, to the ensemble now.' The pairing of Synge's drama with Macbeth (which features Marty Rea as Macbeth and Mullen as Lady Macbeth) picks out two strands of the company's work: west of Ireland plays, and its exploration of Shakespeare. (Another strand features when Samuel Beckett 's Endgame opens in New York in October.) Five decades on, Druid is still very much made in Galway. Druid has its own shops, building its sets and making its costumes here. Druid: production manager Barry O'Brien. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill At an industrial estate in the northeast of the city, Barry O'Brien, a production manager who has worked with the company since the 1990s, has been supervising construction of the dark, dramatic set for the double bill, designed by the long-time Druid collaborator Francis O'Connor. Gus Dewar, a carpenter who has worked with the company for 25 years, leads construction, following O'Connor's model box. In the small maquette on a table the miniature planks are slightly offset, there are tiny LED lights, and different levels of seating banks are visible. The (very limited) audience will inhabit the dark world of both plays along with the cast, within its walls. Druid: carpenter Gus Dewar. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Sections of the full-size set are in the middle of the space, half-made, being painted by scenic artists. Behind that, industrial shelves reach to the ceiling, holding furniture from multiple Druid shows. Set have been made and stored here since 2016, making it possible to keep and reuse much. There must be hundreds of chairs of various styles, plus tables. Many are frequently reused; black chairs from The House, and The Seagull at Coole Park. Some are shrink-wrapped to keep them together. There are stacks of floors and set bases, including two DruidO'Casey floors: 'We had to build two sets because it was going to America.' Then again, 'The House last year was 90 per cent recycled from DruidO'Casey, flats and floors repurposed.' On top of a dismantled scaffolding tower sits the gorgeous purple chaise longue from Sonya Kelly's Furniture, which Druid staged in 2018; it was upholstered in Westport. It has since been used in photoshoots, including for the programme of last year's Galway International Arts Festival. Druid: the chaise-longue from the play Furniture and, beside it, the bare tree trunk from Waiting for Godot. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Beside the chaise longue is a bare tree trunk from Druid's 2016 production of Waiting for Godot. The juxtaposition catches you. On a large shelf stuffed with rocking chairs, one is the Beauty Queen original, according to O'Brien. Hessian sacks filled with a fire-retardant beanbag mix were in Eugene McCabe's King of the Castle in 2017. We go upstairs, past sound and lighting equipment and shelves of lighting gels, with a huge poster on the front, from Playboy and Shadow of the Glen, which Druid brought to the Kennedy Center, in Washington, DC, in 2008. They took it down from outside the theatre afterwards, O'Brien says. Upstairs is impressively organised. There's a bag of swords from DruidShakespeare (heading now for Macbeth), plus two spinning wheels, one of which will feature in Riders to the Sea. Druid: Swords from DruidShakespeare, to be used in Macbeth. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill There are shelves of labelled boxes: Money; Hairbrush, Hairdryer, Makeup, Hand Mirror, Fans; Toys & Hobbies; Handcuffs & Shackles; Flashlights etc; Medical Paraphernalia; Picture Frames; Mobile Phones; Medals; Blood Bags (for effects: 'we make them ourselves with cling film'); Cigarettes & Tobacco; Matches & Lighters; Religious Pictures ('people are always giving us religious pictures'); Flowers. Druid: boxes of props. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Across the way are shelves of sorted crockery and kitchen stuff. An old-fashioned shop weighing scale ('from Big Maggie, I'd say'). An old American coffee machine, loads of oil lamps, miniature radiators ('I wouldn't chance plugging them in now'). In Nun's Island in the city, Druid's head of costume, Clíodhna Hallissey, is experimenting with colleagues on a jacket for Macbeth, cutting out a pattern for a toile, or mock-up, of a slim-fitting padded jacket, to see how it suits Marty Rea. She and Francis O'Connor are designing costumes for the double bill. Hallissey, who is from Connemara, studied drama at the University of Galway. After winning Druid's Marie Mullen bursary, in 2019, she started working on costumes for its production of The Cherry Orchard. Druid: head of costume Clíodhna Hallissey. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill They also store outfits here from the past 15 years or so. Costume space used to be transient, so 'we don't have costumes from Beauty Queen or any of that, which is really heartbreaking'. The costumes tell Druid's story from another angle. In this Aladdin's cave there's an opulence but also a reality, as we step over some basins left out to collect drips on a rainy Galway day. Inside, beyond the workroom, it's like a charity shop, but with an exotic selection, and incredibly detailed categorisation. There are racks and racks of clothes, with labelled sections: Short-sleeved Cardigans, Button-up Cardigans, Chunky Button-up Cardigans, Chunky Pullovers, and on and on. Druid: rails of clothes at Nun's Island. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill We count 13 rails in this room. Maybe 60 items per rail. That's just the women's. Down further is a room of men's costumes, and one with shoes and boots. Hallissey has no idea how many items are here. 'It's in a constant state of reorganisation.' She's planning a small costume display for during the run, in the Hall of the Red Earl, opposite the Mick Lally Theatre. A costume Aaron Monaghan wore as Richard III looks like chain mail, a sort of quilted leather jacket and shoulder piece with layered sleeves, overlaid with bronze and silver sequins and studs. Richard walked with a limp and had a hump; one of Monaghan's feet was bound each night, alternating between them to even the strain. A long black lace and wool dress with a high Elizabethan neck and lace collar, which Siobhán Cullen wore as Lady Anne in Richard III, has punky spikes on the shoulder, and a harness attached to the dress's long train. 'She drags the body on stage with this.' Druid: Siobhán Cullen and Aaron Monaghan in Richard III. Photograph: Robbie Jack Hallissey takes out sickly Mollser's green dress and apron from The Plough and the Stars. 'We used Irish linen as much as we could for O'Casey', from Emblem Weavers in Wexford, a natural fabric to complement the set. Rosie Redmond's tatty pink satin bloomers have seen better days. 'These are my favourites. She's been in the Monto a long time.' They had them made. 'You should have seen these, so pristine and beautiful. 'Thank you so much: we're going to wreck these.' We had to go at them with paint and a grater to give this lived-in feel. It was painful to have to destroy them.' We look at costumes from Thomas Kilroy's version of The Seagull at Coole Park, during Covid. 'They are not very washable for an outdoor show. We were praying there would be no rain, because trying to dry these before the next day ... We had to give a sense of the time period, so we couldn't make everything waterproof.' [ Druid at 50: Joe O'Shaughnessy's photographic history of the Galway theatre company Opens in new window ] In Druid's professional shops, Hynes says, 'I think we're making a particular contribution to the Irish theatre industry, by preserving the skills of propmakers, carpenters, electricians, costume designers, costumemakers. We're keeping those at home. 'There's crews that started to grow up, just as much as the actors in ensembles, around Druid. Not only did we as actors start to learn skills, but so did the crews. I personally feel our crews are the best in Ireland, possibly the best anywhere.' Hynes explains the choice of Macbeth and Riders to the Sea for Druid's anniversary. 'We had to do a Synge', and they'd always talked about Macbeth but 'always felt very afraid of it'. She instinctively felt connections. 'They're plays where time is not a sequential, consecutive thing: it moves back and forth, like I think it does in people's minds. They connect children. They connect the spiritual, the superstition. Then there's our relationship with Synge and our relationship with Shakespeare.' Half a century is a milestone. International reach and kudos, but still a local theatre. World stage, still made in Galway. Druid 's double bill of Riders to the Sea and Macbeth opens at the Mick Lally Theatre on Tuesday, July 15th (with previews from Thursday, July 10th), and runs until Saturday, July 26th, as part of Galway International Arts Festival ; all performances are sold out. Macbeth moves to the Gaiety, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival , from September 25th until October 5th
Irish Independent
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Sabina Higgins to open photography exhibition charting 50 years of Galway's Druid Theatre
O'Shaugnessy's Druid is a series of 50 photos featuring actors, staff, productions, and various events over the years at the infamous theatre. Druid has been a fixture in the Galway arts community since 1975, and O'Shaugnessy has watched its evolution since its founding. The Druid Theatre Company has earned global recognition, receiving four Tony Awards in 1998 for The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Among these was Best Director, awarded to Garry Hynes—the first woman ever to win a Tony for directing. Local legends who became international stars, including Cillian Murphy, have also graced the Druid's stage. Gallery Manager of The Kenny Gallery, Dean Kelly said: 'We're deeply honoured to host this exhibition of Joe Shaughnessy's photographs celebrating 50 years of Druid – the people, the places, the sheer magic of it. That Sabina Higgins, a former Druid actor and a lifelong champion of the arts and social justice, is opening the show makes it all the more meaningful. It feels like Galway's creative spirit, past and present, coming full circle. This is a cultural history told in images - one that belongs to everyone who's ever been moved by a performance or changed by a play.' The event is celebrating 50 years of Druid Theatre Company as part of Galway International Art Festival. You can catch the launch event at The Kenny Gallery on July 12, 2025, at 2:30PM and the exhibition will run through August 14th, 2025. Admission is free.
