Latest news with #TheWalworthFarce
Sunday World
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
Domhnall Glesson says he'd ‘love to' act alongside his dad and brother again
FAMILY MATTERS | As he plays his darkest character in new film Echo Valley, Domhnall Gleeson looks back over the highlights of an incredible career. But the actor reckons sharing the stage with famous father Brendan and equally successful actor brother Brian at Dublin's Olympia Theatre has been his proudest moment in the spotlight. Treading the boards together at the start of 2015 in Enda Walsh's comedy The Walworth Farce, the trio were critically hailed for their comic timing and chemistry. Domhnall as Armitage Hux in Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens 'I did a play with my dad and my brother in Dublin in the Olympia about ten years ago and I thought the work was stunning,' Gleeson said. 'The play was absolutely insane — it was bananas and it was amazing working in Dublin every day. But getting to go out and do that with my dad and my brother every night was a very, very proud thing in my life. 'I still when I think about that; I think it's amazing that we did it. And I'm proud of the work I did in that one as well.' The thespian dynasty, led by legendary patriarch Brendan (70) who was nominated for an Oscar in The Banshees of Inisheerin — has since reunited on the small screen for hit TV series Frank of Ireland in 2021, written by Domhnall and Bad Sisters' star Brian. Domhnall as Bill Weasley in Harry Potter And Domhnall admits the family are due another performance because he 'always wants to work with them'. 'We've done it a few times and if the right thing came along, I'd always want to work with them. They're amazing. I'd love to work with them again.' It's full circle for Domhnall, who enjoyed one of his first screen roles opposite his dad in Martin McDonagh's short movie Six Shooters while barely in his early twenties. Now 42, the star has taken the opportunity to reflect on his impressive, more than two decades on the stage and screen while promoting his latest role in Apple TV+ thriller, Echo Valley alongside Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. Speaking to Magazine+ from London, Domhnall cuts a relaxed figure in jeans and a navy cardigan just before the film's release. While pondering some of his most memorable roles, including turns in Lenny Abraham's The Little Stranger and in Enda Walsh's play Medicine, the actor admits some of most physically punishing roles belong to Angelina Jolie's WWII epic Unbroken and Leonardo DiCaprio's blockbuster The Revenant. Domhnall with Rachel McAdams in About Time But playing Irish icon Bob Geldof in 2010's When Harvey Met Bob left the deepest impression. 'I mean, I lost weight for a role in Unbroken, and that was challenging, and The Revenant was a really, physically tough shoot. 'Then I also played Bob Geldof in a thing years ago and so that was a different sort of physical transformation, but also fun to do. And, you know, doing somebody who exists trying to get their voice down, and the look down, that was all different.' Did Geldof see his performance? 'No, I met him and he was very nice, but I don't think he ever saw the thing. And maybe that was for the best.' Married to longtime partner, producer Juliette Bonass, since 2023, the actor has enjoyed a spectacularly diverse career, including the aforementioned turns in the Star Wars franchise as malevolent Genera Hux, to fan favourite Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter universe. But when I ask him about a role that audiences and critics had misunderstood, he offers a surprise response with 2013 About Time with Bill Nighy and Rachel McAdams, which was one of Gleeson's first forays into romantic comedy. 'About Time, when it came out, it wasn't like critically reviled or anything like that. I think it did fine with the critics, and it actually did okay at the box office. But it's been really heartening and amazing to see how over the years, it's sort of grown and grown in stature. That's been like, amazing to see. I guess as time has gone on, the reception to it has warmed comparative to how it was when it came out. And so I think that's always a good I always remind myself of that. 'If you're in something and it doesn't find an audience when it comes out, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll just never have an audience forever, you know.' Brian, Domhnall and Brendan in The Walworth Farce A sci-fi romance about a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to change his past in hopes of finding his true love, About Time was initially criticised for a lack of coherent storyline and gaping plot holes. However, the British production went on to make over €76m at the global box office and Gleeson admits he'd love to see a sequel down the line. 'I could do scenes with Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy and all those amazing people again. So maybe I'd pick that and I'd get to hang out with Richard Curtis again, which would be nice.' After his character — spoiler alert! — ends up happily ever after with McAdams' character, does he think they'd still be together in the follow-up? 'When we finished the film, that's what I felt. Yeah. When I finished the film, I thought, this is a guy set up for happiness. And that made me very happy for him.' In Echo Valley, Julianne Moore plays a lonely rancher who covers up a murder to protect her addict daughter, played by Hollywood It Girl Sydney Sweeney. In a brooding turn, Gleeson is Jackie, a scheming lowlife who stumbles on the truth, and becomes hell bent on destroying the family. And the actor relished the chance to play nasty in the thriller, which also stars Irish acting legend Fiona Shaw. 'He's a guy, he was pretty dark. He was a pretty, you know, a pretty awful character. And it's nice to do something as a reactionary against that.' With an upcoming role in TV series The Paper, a highly anticipated offshoot from Ricky's Gervais' iconic comedy, The Office, Gleeson has worked tirelessly non-stop for the past two decades. But the actor has learned the important lesson to slow down. 'I've done roles where I end where I had been working so much that I went into it tired. And it's not good to start a job tired, you know what I mean? I've done jobs where I entered into it tired because I've been working too closely up before. 'But then again, if you have something locked in that you have to do and then, you know, Paul Thomas Anderson comes calling, it's not like you're going to say, 'no, sorry, I need time to rest for the right opportunity'.'
Extra.ie
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Brendan Gleeson to star in The Weir for his first theatre performance in 10 years
Brendan Gleeson is set to return to the stage for the first time in a decade in a production of The Weir at the 3Olympia. The play, written and for the first time directed by Conor McPherson, will run from August 8 to September 6. It will then appear in London's Harold Pinter theatre from September 12 to December 6, marking Gleeson's West End debut. 'The last time I appeared on stage was 10 years ago, at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, where I started my career,' Gleeson said. 'I can't wait to be back there, and then to play in the West End for the first time, at the beautiful Pinter Theatre.' Though perhaps better known for his career in film, with roles in The Banshees of Inisherin , In Bruges and more, the Irish actor began his acting work in theatre. Gleeson last appeared on the theatre stage in 2015, performing alongside his sons Domhnall and Brian in The Walworth Farce , also at the 3Olympia. McPherson's The Weir was written in 1997, set in a rural Irish pub as the regulars share stories with a newly arrived woman from Dublin. It won an Olivier Award for the best new play following its premiere. 'I can hardly believe it's been 30 years since I wrote The Weir and about 30 years since I first met the wonderful Brendan Gleeson,' McPherson said. 'It's an absolute honour to bring this play to life again with one of the greatest titans of Irish acting.' Tickets for the 3Olympia run go on sale Saturday, May 3.
New York Times
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Safe House' Review: Singing a Song of Loneliness
Wearing a meadow-green T-shirt that proclaims her an Irish Princess, Grace dances with a white stuffed bunny that is her confidant. The music is Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty' waltz, and it's a clue to how Grace's life plays out — not the ballet's storybook ending, just the tragic parts. In this snippet of a scene near the top of Enda Walsh's new play 'Safe House,' which opened on Thursday at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, the music gets speedier, more intense, all sense of comfort vanishing. Control, too, but that's hardly a constant for Grace, a homeless young woman with a mind blurred by alcohol. Like Sleeping Beauty after the curse kicks in, she is exiled from a life that looked secure enough from the outside but was treacherous from the start. Fair warning, though: Woven through with songs by Anna Mullarkey that are sung by Kate Gilmore as Grace, Walsh's Abbey Theater production feels more like a live performance of a concept album than a play. In his plumbing of trauma and abuse — think 'The Walworth Farce' or 'Medicine,' his most recent play at St. Ann's — he can have a way of reaching right into your viscera. Not here, unfortunately. In 'Safe House,' it is 1996 in rural Galway, and Grace is scrabbling together an existence on the margins. Guzzling box wine, trading her body for money, she plays grim bits of her sepia past on repeat in her head; for us, these are projections upstage or scraps of audio. Long gone though she is from the home she grew up in, which for her was a place of harm, she has not severed every family tie. On the other end of a phone, we hear her father pick up. 'I can hear you breathing,' he says, in Irish. 'Where are you, Grace?' Telling her story in loops of bruised memories and shards of implication, the show is precisely framed and layered, pleasing to the eye and ear: video and voice-over, confetti and fog. The music sounds like loneliness and hope. There's a hint of '90s indie pop, too, with shades of Dolores O'Riordan — or maybe it's just defiance — in Gilmore's voice. (Set and costume design are by Katie Davenport, lighting by Adam Silverman, video by Jack Phelan, sound by Helen Atkinson.) But the whole of 'Safe House' feels distant, and that isn't Gilmore's doing. There's no losing ourselves in the play, no entering Grace's story, because she isn't even a symbol, really, but rather an abstraction: a girl who grew up on princess myths and notions of female grace, who dreamed of a kinder, more love-filled life, who still seeks a place of safety. We're in her head, sort of, but minus all the context she has for these daggers of recollection. In video, we see young Grace in a Cinderella dress and tiara, and we hear her aunt call her 'the princess.' We gather that Grace's mother beat her — a cruelty akin to the witch's in the 'Snow White' clip we glimpse on little box TVs. We watch grown-up Grace enact a deathlike Sleeping Beauty tableau that probably should make us shiver, yet is pleasing aesthetically. Walsh, a prolifically, experimentally form-shifting creator, writes in a program note of the play's deliberate obliqueness. Certainly that can be a vital element in a work of art, accommodating even opposing interpretations. But there is such a thing as being too oblique. This isn't the customary disorientation of a Walsh play, where you're thrust into a strange universe that asks you to puzzle it out. 'Medicine' was like that: chaotic and messy, loquacious and unhinged, but with a pulsing sense of the lost human being at its center. 'Safe House,' which would seem in form and subject matter a natural successor, is far neater, but so verbally pared back that it gives the audience too little to hold onto. It's frustrating, because so many ingredients of a deeper experience are in place, yet sans the alchemy. The penultimate stage image, which I won't spoil, is breathtakingly theatrical. It would leave us shattered if 'Safe House' worked as I think it means to. I was unscathed. I did wonder if the world's current turmoil had colored my receptiveness. But I wanted this play to consume me. I wanted the shattering. Maybe next time.
