‘I felt like I was screaming in a vacuum' - Brendan Gleeson on broken elder care and a return to theatre
• Why Brendan Gleeson says The Weir carries a message young people need now more than ever
• How his parents' final days changed how he sees elder care
• Why he called Micheál Martin a 'moron' on live TV — and why he still doesn't regret it
Sitting across the table from me could be Mad Eye Moody, with his magical swivelling eye and wooden leg, ready to share his dark arts ...
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Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Brendan Gleeson: ‘I can't go into a pub any more. I really miss it'
'It was an odd experience,' Brendan Gleeson says with a smile. Seated in a rehearsal space in a leafy part of Dublin, the Irish actor is reflecting on the episode he hosted in 2022 of Saturday Night Live, the US television sketch show that likes to have stars deliver questionable comedy skits to a studio audience. 'I didn't have experience of it, and I first said, 'No, absolutely not.' Then Colin Farrell said, 'You should do it,' and I know him well enough to trust him – that he's not a surfacy person, that there was something that was worth doing,' Gleeson says. 'The whole process was fascinating. They don't really want an act, and yet you're not yourself. They only make up jokes that week. You get things that half-work. It's very gruelling. And you don't know who the audience are. I didn't really want to watch it back.' It's a measure of Gleeson's popularity that, although his hosting of the show with Farrell attracted a few nitpicky reviews, for many it felt akin to watching a beloved groom give a wedding speech after a long engagement. We were on his side, willing to live through the cringy bits in the service of seeing the show acknowledge a simple truth: Gleeson is a star. READ MORE With roles in The Guard, Paddington 2, The Tragedy of Macbeth, In Bruges, Joker: Folie à Deux, Calvary and The Banshees of Inisherin , Gleeson is one of Ireland's most prominent and charismatic actors. At 70, the Malahide resident – father of his fellow performers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson – is in the remarkable position of being busier than ever. Or, as he puts it, 'I haven't time to wash my face.' We're meeting today because Gleeson is returning to the stage after a decade's absence, specifically to the 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin, followed by the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, where he will make his West End debut as Jack in The Weir, which is being directed by its writer, Conor McPherson . A tale of friends meeting for a drink in Co Leitrim when a stranger among them reveals an emotionally engulfing personal story, the play features little surface action yet delivers a remarkable punch. The Weir: Brendan Gleeson with fellow cast members Seán McGinley, Owen McDonnell, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Kate Phillips. Photograph: Rich Gilligan As I slip into the rehearsal space at Wesley House in Ranelagh, Gleeson and the rest of the cast are into their second week of line reads and stage preparations. They're not sweating it yet. Or not quite yet. Playing the part of the oleaginous estate agent Finbar, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor has thrown away his playbook to summon up the words from memory. So has Seán McGinley , in the role of bachelor Jim. Both have monologues to give. There are rueful chuckles as occasionally a prompt is needed or a line flubbed. Gleeson is sitting between them, on a bar stool, his white shirt and suit jacket on, hair slicked back, a spider web of lines tracing his forehead, inhabiting his role with earthy precision. Across the room, McPherson, inscrutable in a cap and glasses, is a quiet, watchful presence for all the actors, who also include Kate Phillips and Owen McDonnell. 'I'm trying to allow them to be as close to themselves as they can be,' McPherson says later. 'Brendan has a huge presence. He's very powerful, very funny, but he can give you lots of depth. It's a pleasure. It's like if you get into a very expensive car: you don't have to do very much; it's just, 'We're going.'' 'I'm bad for the planet?' the actor huffs amicably when I quote the expensive-car line back to him. But he's smiling. 'Ah, that's nice.' He enjoys collaborating with directors and has a healthy respect in particular for the Irish theatre-makers he has worked with over the years. 'In America, in a lot of TV, tailoring the dialogue is almost taken for granted. A lot of actors would take control of what they're doing themselves. But with somebody like Conor McPherson or Martin McDonagh , the rhythm of the language is so important; everything is so precise. You'd be an idiot to try and mess with it.' Gleeson loves The Weir, which was written nearly three decades ago, and is set entirely in the bar where the group meet, for how it portrays us as Irish people. The stories that are told are pithy and revealing, a simulacrum of life in Ireland in the 1990s. 'Lads would come down to the pub, and the level of conversation that used to go on in those places: underestimate these people at your peril,' Gleeson says. 'There was an incredible beauty in the way people informed themselves. In England you'd go into a pub and you didn't strike up a conversation the way you would over there. In Ireland there was too much drinking; it was no harm for that to shift. But the pub was a centre whereby people touched base. It was like the postman coming, the small community, the ties that bind.' There may be a certain irony for Gleeson in that the play is all about the quiet pint, something the actor no longer feels able to enjoy. He sighs when the subject comes up. 'I can't go into a place any more in terms of pubs, because it turns into selfie country. I really miss [it], particularly going into music sessions. You mightn't believe me, but people will do amazingly dumb things about interrupting you. I draw the line at funerals.' I wonder if it's his roles in global film franchises – in the Harry Potter series he plays Mad-Eye Moody; in the world of Paddington he appears as the winningly abrasive chef Knuckles McGinty – that have made the difference in the past decade. Not so, Gleeson says. It's the mobile phones and the likelihood of people texting their friends to let them know if Gleeson might be sitting in on a session. 'The mobile phones mean you can do nothing. I'm not an elite musician. I was always running after the bus that way. But before you'd hear of a few quiet tunes somewhere, and you could go and you'd get a couple of hours spare [playing]. Now somebody has texted, and it's rammed within half an hour.' Does he feel isolated? 'I would, certainly. It does make the world smaller. Being able to drop into a place and just do the crossword and talk to somebody, you can't do it any more.' A memory surfaces: the opening night of Enda Walsh 's Ballyturk at Galway International Arts Festival in 2015. Following the play, which starred Cillian Murphy, the Gleeson family went with other theatregoers to an after-show gathering at a nearby hotel, where they clustered fireside in the lobby. You could feel the implicit plea from them in the ether: to be allowed to enjoy a night out without being bothered. I did leave them alone, but I will admit it was hard work pretending to ignore them. Gleeson nods when I mention seeing them. 'It's only the last couple of years I've realised it's uncomfortable for everyone. It alters the equilibrium. So you just say, 'Okay, I've got this far. I'm 70 now, so I should really not be going into those places anyway.'' Gleeson has the complicating virtue of having come to acting relatively late. Formerly a teacher at Belcamp College in Balgriffin, in north Dublin, Gleeson was 34 when he was cast as Michael Collins in the RTÉ drama The Civil War. His ascent was far from assured in the early days: casting agents wanted him for character roles, but whether playing the Dublin criminal Martin Cahill in John Boorman's The General, Mel Gibson's sidekick in Braveheart or the lead in McDonagh's Oscar-winning Six Shooter, Gleeson had an ease in front of the camera that meant directors wanted to work with him. Ask the average Irish person about a Gleeson film and they might mention Hollywood big-budget affairs such as Joker: Folie à Deux or the Sundance TV series State of the Union , for which Gleeson received an Emmy nomination. But they're just as likely to wax lyrical about home-grown films such as The Guard, directed by John Michael McDonagh, or The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh, in which Gleeson riffed beautifully off Farrell as his forlorn former friend. The Banshees of Inisherin: Brendan Gleeson with Colin Farrell in Martin McDonagh's film. Photograph: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Then there are the children's films, such as the glorious Paddington 2 , that Gleeson cherishes making. 'I grew to like movies as against films,' Gleeson says. 'Especially kids' films. Why would you underestimate children? Their little worlds, their beliefs, when you see kids watching something, their big eyes out on saucers, they're living this. It's important, so you do it properly if you can.' [ Brendan Gleeson the American is not nearly as agreeable Brendan Gleeson the Irishman Opens in new window ] When The Weir transfers to London, Gleeson will spend time with the junior members of the Gleeson tribe. 'It'll be exciting in terms of the lads are over there,' he says. 'I'll get to see my grandkids.' He doesn't talk much about his wife or four children, but it's obvious they're a tight-knit crew. That last stage performance 10 years ago was with his sons Brian and Domhnall in The Walworth Farce , another of Enda Walsh's plays. 'I find myself asking more and more questions of them and to give me an insight into things I'm blind to or things I don't quite understand,' he says about their acting skills. He sounds proud of them. 'I am.' The Walworth Farce: Brendan Gleeson with his sons Domhnall and Brian in Enda Walsh's play. Photograph: Photograph: Patrick Redmond Gleeson could big up his sons or name-drop all day if he wanted, but it's obvious he chooses his words in interviews with care. 'I'm moaning a lot,' he says at one stage before course-correcting. It makes it all the more endearing to hear the warm delight in his voice when he occasionally allows in some discussion of his career high points, such as his Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actor, for The Banshees of Inisherin in 2023. 'I was thrilled to get an Oscar nomination,' he says. 'When I walked in and saw the people that were there in one room. I mean, you've Spielberg over there, all these film-makers.' Gleeson worked with Steven Spielberg on the 2001 film AI Artificial Intelligence , a dystopian tale of robotic intelligence that has more resonance in today's bot-driven world than ever. The actor has recently been dealing with a deepfake version of himself that has been circulating on the internet, touting a cream that 'totally eliminates pain'. 'Two people sent it to me. I'm not on any of that stuff,' he says about social media. 'So I was blissfully unaware, and thought it was a joke. But then I realised, 'Jesus, are they asking people to actually press a link?' So I just wanted to say that I don't endorse anything other than support for the hospice.' [ Despair among young people 'really, really scary', Brendan Gleeson says at hospice fundraiser Opens in new window ] Gleeson is a long-time campaigner for improved resources at St Francis Hospice in Raheny, in north Dublin, where both his parents spent their final stages of life; his galvanising social conscience is an important part of his character. It has caused more than one person to question if there's a role for him in politics. Or, say, in the Áras when the presidential role comes free? [ 'I would be dead now if it hadn't been for the hospice' Opens in new window ] 'I'm quite opinionated,' Gleeson counters. 'I just think I'm not a good politician. I can't get to the place. I love Michael D Higgins for what he's done, what he's doing, his reckless energy and his positivity. Everything about what he does fills me with inspiration. I'm not good at that. I do get upset about things that are patently wrong, but I'm not the fixer of those issues. I just hope we can allow people to have a place to live. I think profit-making on homes is immoral.' If politics is partly about the exchange of ideas, art can spark similarly big conversations. The Weir comes to Dublin at the same time that The Pillowman , by his friend and collaborator McDonagh, runs across town at the Gate Theatre. It's a controversial play that tackles themes of violence against children. When I tell Gleeson that I found McDonagh's play tough to watch, his gaze sharpens. [ The Pillowman review: Anthracite-black comedy. The most appalling crimes Opens in new window ] 'I heard there were people getting upset in the audience,' Gleeson says. 'Some people in particular places in their lives may not be able to handle it. Part of art is to face the brutality of the truth. That's why we keep Auschwitz. The idea of sheltering everybody from horrible consequences, it's like, if you've never been to an abattoir, that's where you go. 'Early on with Martin, I challenged him on something. I said, 'Are you just pushing the envelope for its own sake?' I said you've got to really know what you're doing. And he said, 'Everything I write is about love.' I realised with his work you don't hate anyone; you find the humanity. 'I did the same with John Boorman with The General. You go into a place where you're saying, 'This is inhuman.' No, this is human. This is humanity, I'm afraid.' Gleeson puts himself through the wringer as an actor. In addition to his work on the forthcoming film adaptation by Emma Donoghue of H Is for Hawk and the TV series Spider-Noir, Gleeson has recently returned from Atlanta, where he was filming The Good Daughter, by the crime author Karin Slaughter. 'It was emotionally demanding and traumatising,' he says. 'I was wasted when I got back, in a head-space sense.' The Weir will represent a palate-cleanser. It's a play that contains quiet truths; that suggests more than it shows. 'At the time of life I'm at, and in the zeitgeist where there's so much apocalyptic desperation, this is a beautiful piece of work,' Gleeson says. 'It's very profound.' The play is likely to be the hottest ticket in town. Anne Clarke of Landmark Productions , its coproducer, is worried about one thing only: how to distribute the guest-list tickets on opening night. 'It's like Irish theatre royalty,' she says, laughing. 'Everybody wants to come. We're having these big meetings about how we can manage it.' [ Landmark's Anne Clarke: 'Every producer, if they're honest, is a control freak' Opens in new window ] As for Gleeson, he's fretting about his lines. Well, that and the prospect of getting a break at some point. He smiles when he hears a Leonard Cohen lyric: 'I ache in the places where I used to play.' Seventy is treating him reasonably well, he says. But the body is creaky sometimes. 'I'm wiping the slate clean. I have to take a break. This year and last year was too much. I'll take time to smell the coffee, because you can run around and not see what you're looking at.' Gleeson knows he's in the right place spiritually, in part because of the distance he has travelled in his life. 'I think I was okay as a teacher,' he says. 'When I found acting, I just knew. When I was writing down in my passport under occupation, and I wrote down 'actor', I felt: I'm home.' The Weir opens at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Wednesday, August 13th, with previews from Friday, August 8th. It runs until September 6th, then transfers to the Harold Pinter Theatre, in London, where it runs from September 12th until December 6th
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Event guide: The Weir, Kilkenny Arts Festival and other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week The Weir From Friday, August 8th until Saturday, September 6th, 3Olympia, Dublin, 7.30pm, €70.60/ €60.60/ €26.50, Conor McPherson's play premiered in London's Royal Court Theatre in July 1997, with its most recent Irish production two and a half years ago at the Abbey . A rather swift return, one might think, but not when the likes of Brendan Gleeson , Tom Vaughan-Lawlor , Kate Phillips and Seán McGinley (who was in the 2008 Gate Theatre production) are involved. Relative newcomer Owen McDonnell (recently seen in Bad Sisters) completes the ensemble cast in a tale of compelling, often unnerving memories of loss imparted in an isolated rural bar somewhere in Co Leitrim. Following its Dublin run, the play will transfer to London's Harold Pinter Theatre from Friday, September 12th until Saturday, December 6th. McPherson, meanwhile, directs his play for the first time. Gigs Pierce Turner – Ó Riada Tuesday, August 5th, Wexford Arts Centre, 8pm, €30, Wexford musical adventurer Pierce Turner rarely misses a trick when it comes to reframing his work. Presented as part of Wexford Fleadh 2025, Ó Riada will feature songs from his back catalogue that have been inspired not just by Irish baroque composer/ arranger Seán Ó Riada but also by Sligo harpist Turlough O'Carolan . Turner is joined on stage by cellist/vocalist Aongus MacAmhlaigh, uileann piper Ned Wall, and a local choir. READ MORE We've Only Just Begun From Thursday, August 7th until Saturday, August 9th, Whelan's, Dublin, 7.30pm, €15/ €7, Winemom The 2025 edition of this three-night music festival sees over 30 performances (bands, solo acts, DJs) across two stages. The almost exclusively Irish female line-up is a poke in the ribs to festival programmers who, consciously or not, avoid gender balance. Anyone with an ear for contemporary Irish music will know there is a wealth of emerging female talent, a fact that this festival makes blindingly obvious. Highlights are plentiful (no hair jokes, thank you), but must-sees include Florence Road, Negro Impacto, Hotgirl, Winemom, Sarah Crean, Annika Kilkenny, I Dreamed a Dream, ShmoneyDoll, Hannahbella, Becky McNeice, and For Nina. Howth Roots and Blues Festival From Friday, August 8th until Sunday, August 10th, Howth, Co Dublin, various venues/times/prices, Susan O'Neill As if to further prove a point about gender balance in music festival programming, Paul Byrne, the organiser of this annual coastal, scenic shebang, has (apparently effortlessly) scheduled Muireann Bradley, Susan O'Neill, Mary Stokes, Bree Harris, Grainne Duffy, Susan Tomelty, Winter Wilson, Jam Tarts, Eeffaa, and several other women to perform over the weekend. The bluesy/rootsy blokes are here, too, of course (including Mundy, Brush Shiels, Rob Strong, Mik Pyro, Boye Papagee, Ben Prevo, Dermot Byrne, and more), but it's reassuring to see that there's a will to be fair, there's a way. Arts Festival Kilkenny Arts Festival From Thursday, August 7th until Sunday, August 17th, various venues/times/prices, Ciarán Hinds Ten days of superb, different venues (from churches and courtyards to town houses and, yes, a castle), singular artistic collaborations, and a rare kind of audience-artist connection – what's not to love about the Kilkenny Arts Festival? Events to circle in red include The More Beautiful World, a specially commissioned alliance between composer/ multi-instrumentalist Sam Perkin , actor Ciarán Hinds , mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty, and US activist Charles Eisenstein (St Canice's Cathedral, Sunday, August 10th, 8.30pm, €30/ €28), Martin Hayes & Friends (St Canice's Cathedral, Saturday, August 16th, 8.30pm, €37/ €35), and This-Topia, a 'part theatre, part rave, part group therapy' performance by choreographer/performer Jessie Thompson, visual designer Ross Ryder, and Irish band Meltybrains? (Watergate Theatre, Sunday, August 17th, 7pm, €25/ €22). Visual Art Art + Soul Until Sunday, August 31st, Culloden Estate and Spa, Belfast, adm free, Heading to Court by Patrick O'Reilly One of Northern Ireland's leading cultural events, Art + Soul presents a remarkable opportunity to view works by the likes of notable international artists such as Tracey Emin, Banksy, Damien Hirst, Salvador Dalí, Bridget Riley, Andy Warhol, Picasso, and Joan Miró, and many Irish artists (including Patrick O'Reilly, Gordon Harris, and Anna McKeever). There are also over 100 sculptures on display throughout the 12-acre grounds of Culloden Estate. Included in the exhibition period are artists' talks and daily guided tours (12pm/ 2pm/ 4pm). Art+Soul is presented in partnership with Gormleys Art Gallery, Belfast and Dublin. Stage FrielDays: A Homecoming 2025-2029 Until Sunday, August 31st, various counties, Presenting five Brian Friel plays in five weeks is an ambitious undertaking, but 29 of his plays over the next five years is surely beyond that (2029 is the centenary of the playwright's birth in Omagh, Co Tyrone). The official opening for FrielDays features a performed reading of Dancing at Lughnasa, St. Columba's School, Glenties, Co Donegal (until Sunday, August 17th). Film Boyne Valley International Film Festival From Friday, August 8th until Sunday, August 10th, Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, Co Louth, various times/prices, Four Mothers Four years in, and the Boyne Valley International Film Festival (BVIFF) is striding purposefully ahead with a programme that incorporates documentary, animation, shorts, and features. Films include Niall Duffy's Galar, a true-life feature about Donegal's Mica crisis, Aisling Byrne's Oscar-longlisted and IFTA-nominated short Turnaround, and Sonya O'Donoghue's Where the Old Man Lives, featuring writer Michael Harding in his debut acting role. The Gala Screening is Four Mothers, co-written by Drogheda brothers Colin and Darren Thornton, and directed by the latter. Still Running The Little Shop of Horrors Until Saturday, August 9th, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, 7.30pm, €63.49/ €52.30/ €41.05/ €35.45, Little Shop of Horrors Loosely based on the 1960 cult comedy film of the same name, this musical, an all-Irish production, features songs composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid) and lead performances by Irish actors David O'Reilly and Jacqueline Brunton. TheatreworX's Claire Tighe directs, co-produces and choreographs. Book it this week Séamus and Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta, Siamsa Tíre, Tralee, Co Kerry, September 21st, Benson Boone, 3Arena, Dublin, October 24th, King Princess, Vicar Street, Dublin, December 3rd, Kean Kavanagh, Button Factory, Dublin, December 17th,
RTÉ News
21-07-2025
- RTÉ News
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor on starting out: 'I did everything'
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor has told The Brendan O'Connor Show about the early days of his acting career, recounting that he "did everything" to make ends meet. The Love/Hate favourite is back home in Dublin to star opposite Brendan Gleeson, Owen McDonnell, Seán McGinley, and Kate Phillips in writer-director Conor McPherson's The Weir at the 3Olympia Theatre from 8 August. While choosing his five favourite songs on The Brendan O'Connor Show on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday, Vaughan-Lawlor discussed his early years in London after graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). "I did everything," he told the host. "Building sites, hotels, coffee shops, secretarial work, furniture removal, everything, gardening." "But you meet the most amazing people who teach you amazing, amazing lessons," he continued. "This time 20 years ago, I was working in a hotel in Euston, on the Euston Road. And I was grumbling about not having an acting job. And there was a woman there who was from Ethiopia who'd two kids, [aged] six and four. She hadn't seen her kids for two years. "We were getting paid after tax, like, £200 a week. She was in shared accommodation. She was sending home 50% of her wages every week to her family. And she was amazing. "She was fun and light and really hardworking. And I was kind of moping around, 'Oh, I don't have a job! Why won't anyone give me an acting job?!' And she was like, 'Oh, you know, I'm just doing my thing!' "So you meet amazing people with amazing stories. In a way, I'm so grateful for all that non-acting work. You're living and you're seeing the world and you're meeting incredible people." Looking ahead to The Weir at the 3Olympia Theatre, Vaughan-Lawlor said: "It's scary. As opening gets closer, you're like, 'Oh, we've actually got to get up and do this!'" He said it is "a real honour" to be working with "great people" on "a great play." "It's a joy to be in rehearsal," he added.
