Top Irish acting talent takes to the stage

Irish Post

24-05-2025

TO the 2025 TV BAFTAs, for which it is relatively easy even for an Irish celebrity columnist to get tickets because all the famous and important people go to the film BAFTAs in February instead.
For many years the two events were united in a single ceremony.
It must have offered a lovely ego boost for the stars of soaps and TV reality shows; posing on the red carpet alongside Hollywood royalty, they could indulge in the fantasy that they, too, were part of the A-list.
This illusion was cruelly shattered when it was decided to split the two events in 1998. Confusingly they were, and still are, both called the BAFTAs – surely the BAFAs and BATAs would be more accurate?
Yet more crushingly for those who do all the actual work behind the scenes, a further splintering took place in 2000 which meant all the 'craft' gongs were shunted into a separate event; and let ShowBiz tell you, the chances of getting Demi Moore or Timothée Chalamet to attend one of those is a big fat zero.
With a yawning (pun intended) three-month gap between the film and TV Awards, the latter tend to feel like an afterthought.
Not only do they lack the film awards' whiff of international glamour, but the selection and judging process can sometimes feel like something that was half-heartedly tossed off over a few pints down the pub.
Look, ShowBiz begrudges Danny Dyer nothing, but why honour him for his bad-boy-by-numbers turn in the underwhelming Mr Big Stuff rather than for being the very best thing in The Rivals?
Why no scripted comedy nomination for the Gavin & Stacey finale, despite its critical acclaim and 20-or-so million viewers?
Oddest of all was Belfast cop series Blue Lights beating Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light to Best Drama.
Of course, Blue Lines does what it does very well, but to deem it superior to the magnificent achievement of the lush period drama starring Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis, surely the TV event of the year, is beyond baffling.
It's like deeming 1D better songwriters than The Beatles, or Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie a worthier film than The Godfather II.
Also, not to be pedantic (actually, I'm being pedantic) but surely the Blue Lines USP – a show about rookie cops on their first beats – is now wearing a little thin?
Here's blurb for series three: 'Two years into their jobs as response officers, Grace, Annie and Tommy are accustomed to life under the blue lights.' I mean, they're positively grizzled, with broken home lives and goodness knows what else, like all fictional TV detectives. So just like any other cop show then.
Caitriona Balfe returns to the big screen this year
THE FRAGRANT Caitríona Balfe is back on the big screen with her new spy action movie The Amateur.
The film stars Rami Malek as Charlie, a brilliant CIA tech nerd whose wife is killed in a terrorist attack.
When his bosses refuse to avenge the murder, Charlie – a name which feels a terrible fit for Rami Malek, incidentally, but never mind – uses his insider information to blackmail them into giving him a new identity and a crash course in 007 skills so he can find and kill the killers.
In other words, Q has improbably morphed into James Bond, using geeky gadgety skills rather than brute force and puns to get his revenge.
Catriona plays an enigmatic Russian spy and hacker called Inquiline. In an interview with JOE.ie, she was asked if she fancied more action roles in the future.
'Oh, I mean, we should have an Irish action hero, shouldn't we? That would be fun,' she said. 'Yeah, I don't know, we need to create one, don't we?'
Somewhere, Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan are doing indignant double-takes.
Saoirse Monica Jackson will take to the boards this year in Irishtown
BIG NAMES in Irish acting talent is taking to the stage like lemmings.
Even as you read this, Chris O'Dowd will be practising his diaphragmatic breathing in preparation for his evening's performance in Conor McPherson's new play, The Brightening Air.
Co-starring at the Old Vic are Brian Gleeson and Eimhin FitzGerald Doherty, Derbhle Crotty, Seán McGinley, in a production so Irish that if you closed your eyes you could persuade yourself you were at Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
Later on in the year, not a million miles away from the Old Vic at the Harold Pinter theatre, Brian's dad Brendan will head up yet another Conor McPherson play, The Weir.
Ciara Elizabeth Smyth probably had joyless plays like The Weir in mind when writing Irishtown – a new satire about theatre and what it means to be Irish.
It co-stars Derry Girls' Saoirse Monica Jackson, fresh from her standout turn as gangster wife Cheryl in This City is Ours, and who is making her off-Broadway debut in the comedy.
Irishtown focuses on a noted Dublin theatre as they work up a new play which they worry isn't Irish enough. 'I have never been in an Irish play with a happy ending', comments a lead actress to general agreement.
It's a great opportunity for an Irish actress, Saoirse told TheaterMania, adding that it's mercifully shorter than her last stage venture, as Shena in Jez Butterworth's Troubles play The Ferryman. 'You could do this play twice and The Ferryman would still be going on', she says.
Although Irishtown is very funny, it has things to say. 'There's a very prominent line that rang true with me', she said.
'The only male character is talking about getting his big break, and he says to my character 'It's different for me. I could actually make it in America. You will always be passed up to play an Irish part for an English girl doing a terrible accent'.'
'It's incredible to see the success of Irish men at the moment. Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan shine in those ways, but Irish women are always forgotten about.
'It's so easy to romanticise an Irish male actor as being this sort of mysterious, aloof, tortured poet, but it's slightly less palatable for women, and I feel like that's because we're strong and funny and independent, and that's not always the depiction of what they want from a leading lady.'
Which, of course, would take us seamlessly into Paul Mescal's return to the stage, for Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark, possibly followed by a look at Nicola Coughlan in JM Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (neither project exactly taxing them on the accent front).
And then there's Aidan Turner, who looked so hot in 18th century clothes in Poldark that he's doing it all again for Les Liasons Dangereuses.
All three shows are at the National Theatre, but further pontifications will have to wait for another time, as ShowBiz is completely out of column space.