Abbey Theatre desperately seeking Saoirse to follow up on Mescal coup
The National Theatre of Ireland confirmed this week that Mescal, 29, will appear in a run of Tom Murphy's A Whistle In the Dark – though fans will have to wait until 2027 to see him on an Irish stage again.
Extra.ie revealed last November that Abbey bosses were in the process of courting the Gladiator II actor and were willing to play the long game to work around his busy schedule. Paul Mescal. Pic:We also reported at the time that Murphy's plays were being mooted to lure Mescal, who is a fan of the Galway playwright, and this week, a source confirmed the theatre is also attempting to get four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan, 31, and Bafta winner Andrew Scott, 48, to tread its storied boards.
The source said Ronan and Mescal had been the 120-year-old theatre's biggest targets, so bosses will be keen to follow up the triumph announced this week with another A-lister.
Even now, the Co. Carlow-raised Ronan has far less experience on stage than Mescal had before breaking through as Connell in Normal People.
She was already a double Oscar-nominated screen actress before making her stage debut in a 2016/17 Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
She told the Daily Actor at the time she had 'literally never, ever, done a professional play before. She added: 'I had done school plays when I was five to 12 — a tree, an evil queen; I think I played a bumblebee. Saoirse Ronan. Pic:for BFI
'But apart from that [no] theatre at all.'
Since then, she has acted for a live audience in just one further production, playing Lady Macbeth in a feminist reimagining of Macbeth staged on the West End in 2021.
Scott, on the other hand, has dozens of stage credits to his name and two Laurence Olivier Awards to show for it.
The Dublin actor, who starred in All Of Us Strangers with Mescal, was recognised for A Girl In A Car With A Man in 2005 and Present Laughter in 2020, and has continued to take on significant stage roles even as his screen career has skyrocketed in recent years.
Mescal earned stellar reviews and a Laurence Olivier Award in 2023 for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire on the West End, after Normal People had brought the Maynooth man to the world's attention.
And before that, he stole the stage in Irish productions of The Great Gatsby and then The Lieutenant of Inishmore, as his star rose.
To the surprise of some, the Abbey has not made any contact with two other young Irish Oscar nominees, Jessie Buckley and Barry Keoghan.
Kerry woman Buckley, 35, had become an established stage talent on the West End before her screen career took off.
Keoghan, 32, would likely take more persuading – he has not acted on stage since his school days and has told interviewers that his strong preference is for screen roles.
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The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week
