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The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Just wait until Trump takes away our unions': Fionnula Flanagan on America, Ireland and acting silent
Fionnula Flanagan, the veteran Irish actor, has been a star of stage and screen for more than six decades, earning Tony nominations for her theatre work, a nod from the Screen Actors Guild for Waking Ned, a Saturn award for The Others and a voice acting trophy for Song of the Sea – as well as accolades for the cult TV series Lost. This means she has spent a lot of time in the US – in fact, she's lived there since 1968. The home she shared in the Hollywood Hills with her late husband, Garrett O'Connor, was well known for its parties – despite O'Connor, an eminent psychiatrist, being the first president of the Betty Ford Institute. But Flanagan has fallen out of love with the US. She's hanging out in Ireland and intends to sell up in Los Angeles after more than 50 years, a new McCarthyism is brewing and 'hooligans' have taken charge of the White House, she says. The country is not doing well, she thinks. When her husband was working, alcohol was the chief vice. Today, 'the whole of America is now so drug-ridden'. When will she return, I ask, as she sits in an elegant hotel reception room in her native Dublin. Her answer is firm and succinct: 'If I can fix it, never.' Now 83, Flanagan is in town to promote Four Mothers, a tender comedy about a middle-aged gay author landed with the care of four elderly women over one chaotic weekend. Inspired by Gianni Di Gregorio's delightful 2009 Italian comedy Mid-August Lunch, she stars as the leading man's mother, Alma, who can't speak after suffering a stroke. For all the silence the role demanded, Flanagan delivers a tremendous performance as the matriarch of the overcrowded house, using facial movements and short, snappy instructions to her son tapped out on her tablet. The film is getting good notices, but Flanagan found it a challenge to shoot. 'I don't think I'll do that again,' she says. 'I really missed having my voice available. I've never done a role where I didn't have the use of my main instrument.' Because of her roots on stage and in radio, she says, 'I value my voice, and the temptation to use it was so strong. I had to just bite my tongue.' The experience left her with a feeling of 'enormous sympathy for anybody who has had a stroke', she says. 'But the film is about community. About the community that rallies around her.' It is crucial to cling to such fellow feeling, she says – just look at the US, where it's been abandoned. There, money 'is what you get judged by'. The film has won particular praise for foregrounding a relationship not often spotlit in Hollywood: the adult son and elderly mother. 'No matter your gender or sexuality,' says Flanagan, 'everyone has a mother. And what is clever about this film is it shows the burden for a carer is huge, and that relationship doesn't get a lot of attention. All those carers whose lives are – literally, from morning till night – thinking about another person all the time,' she continues. 'Having to put their own desires and wishes and dreams aside and go to bed every night exhausted.' Four Mothers also offers a rare representation of unglamorous older women on the big screen – a world away from the immaculate leads of, say, Book Club. Despite that film's commercial success, and the continued popularity and box office pulling power of actors such as Meryl Streep, older women are still seen as unattractive to studios, Flanagan believes. A paradigm shift would be needed to change that. 'We have been led to believe that intelligence is the domain of mainly men. For women – pardon the expression – it is their fuckability which is taken into account.' Flanagan was born in Dublin in 1941. Her father was an officer in the Irish army, a communist and veteran of the Spanish civil war. Neither of her parents spoke Gaelic, but they were sufficiently committed to Ireland to insist that all five of their children became fluent. She cut her teeth at the Abbey theatre, specialising in James Joyce plays and quickly rising through the ranks. In 1968 she opened on Broadway with Brian Friel's Lovers, after a national tour in which she was struck by the US's student radicalism: 'The campuses were in flames.' Such activism, she laments, is now in short supply, particularly in an entertainment industry gripped by anxiety over Trump. 'There is a lot of nervousness in LA,' she says. 'But just wait until he takes away our [entertainment industry] unions, because they are full of people who, for the most part, disapproved of him and his policies.' We meet a few days after the catastrophic meeting between Donald Trump, JD Vance and Volodomyr Zelenskyy at the White House. She is still reeling from watching the encounter. 'It was shocking, shocking,' she says. 'They have no manners. They are a bunch of hooligans, as my mother would say, headed up by the hooligan-in-chief. There is no humility, which in my opinion should be a prerequisite for the top office of the United States.' She allows herself a wry smile. 'I am so cynical about America.' She quotes Martin Niemöller's poetic First They Came, about the conspiracy of silence over the Holocaust, and says she is 'afraid that is very much the way it will be' unless those who do not support Trump revolt in meaningful ways. Keir Starmer, she thinks, has so far acquitted himself well in comparison. 'He's become the star of the hour. Leadership takes someone not just with common sense, but with humanity, which is certainly not on display in the Oval Office.' Flanagan seems an actor out of time in modern-day Hollywood: she speaks her mind and puts her money where her mouth is. She has been a donor to Sinn Féin and has been vocal in her support of the party for decades. She encountered a considerable backlash for starring alongside Helen Mirren in the controversial 1996 drama Some Mother's Son, playing the militant mother of a Provisional IRA hunger striker. 'The press was vicious,' she recalled of the period in 2012. 'They didn't touch Helen because she was their darling. But they behaved towards me as if I was an IRA bomber. It was appalling.' In 2002, she spoke at a memorial hosted by Sinn Féin for republicans killed during the Troubles, and seven years later joined Gerry Adams on a US lecture tour. Her support for Martin McGuinness's 2011 bid for Ireland's presidency brought more ire. But the following year she denied accusations of being sympathetic to either their cause or their methods. 'I got involved because of the peace process,' she told the Irish Independent. 'That is why I did it. I wouldn't have become involved otherwise.' When a reporter for the Sunday Times told her she was hosting a 'reception for murderers' she replied, facetiously, 'I hope so – I wouldn't go to this much trouble for anyone else.' Flanagan is still a formidable force on stage, too – she starred in John B Keane's uncompromising masterpiece Sive at the Gaiety theatre in Dublin last year, and in Sam Mendes's Broadway production of The Ferryman back in 2018. More stage work would be a great consolation for quitting America, she says, citing Mrs Tancred in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock as her dream role. 'I am a theatre animal,' she says. 'I could live in a theatre. My prayer is that I'll drop dead in the wings at the end of the third act.' Another wry smile. 'That way they won't have to make excuses to the audience.' Four Mothers is in UK and Irish cinemas from 4 April and screens at the BFI Flare festival in London on 26 and 28 March
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
EastEnders casts much-loved actor for special Phil Mitchell episode - and fans will be shocked
EastEnders is set to air a special episode focusing on Phil Mitchell's recovery following his devastating suicide attempt. During the soap's 40th anniversary episodes in February, Walford legend Phil (played by Steve McFadden) tried to take his own life and was later taken to a mental health unit. In the upcoming instalment, Phil will befriend fellow patient Gaz, played by special guest star Keith Allen, who will help him open up and begin his road to recovery. The special episode will be set across four weeks, seeing Phil begin treatment to address his inner trauma and understand his depression and symptoms of psychosis. Gaz will bond with Phil, helping him to engage in therapy and group activities after initially being reluctant. READ MORE: EastEnders fans 'work out' identity of Tommy Moon's mysterious friend in a worrying twist READ MORE: EastEnders Stacey Slater's 'secret siblings revealed' following Martin Fowler's death Keith launched his acting career in 1981 when he starred as he played Heckler in the series Wolcott. The 71-year-old is known for a variety of roles, with highlights including Trainspotting (1996), The Others (2001) and more recently, The Buckingham Murders (2023), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and the TV series Robin Hood (2006 - 2009). Speaking on his guest role, Keith said: "I've written a number one hit single, I've presented Top of the Pops, I've played the lead in the West End and I was at Craven Cottage when we beat Juventus it get better than that?" He added: "Well, yes, I've just guested in an episode of EastEnders... What a joy! And what an honour to be a part of Steve McFadden's incredibly moving story line. I may be a resting actor but I now rest in peace." The BBC soap has worked with several charities including The Samaritans, Rethink Mental Illness, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), and Mind to ensure Phil's story is portrayed accurately and sensitively. The show's executive producer Chris Clenshaw has shared his excitement at Keith joining EastEnders, he said: "I'm delighted to welcome the incredibly talented Keith Allen to the cast of EastEnders as he takes on the guest role of Gaz in a special episode focusing on Phil's mental health. "As Phil struggles to begin treatment, we explore how his relationship with fellow patient Gaz, helps Phil to take the first step in his road to recovery." Paying tribute to the soap stars, Chris added: "Keith and Steve's performances are both phenomenal, and thoughtfully and sensitively portray the complex realities of mental health recovery and the impact of hypermasculinity." EastEnders airs Monday - Thursday at 7:30pm on BBC One and iPlayer
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Victorian melodrama turned the sweet music of gothic into something dark and sinister
In 1764, Horace Walpole published the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, set in a labyrinthine castle surrounded by woods. The novel features the supernatural, with a dark secret from the past at its core. Today, 260 years later, gothic is still with us in the form of 'contemporary gothic' plays, fiction, films, music and computer games. Central to the popularity of gothic is the way it affects its audiences. It is supposed to unsettle, to make the flesh creep and provoke feelings of claustrophobia. Soundtracks for gothic films are integral to creating such effects, building suspense and unease while amplifying the visceral impact of sudden jump scares. Alejandro Amenábar's soundtrack for The Others (2001), for example, weirds its listeners out. The hollow but reverberant timbre of brushed piano strings evokes the spaces of the house, conjuring up the old-fashioned alienness of the place. Action, set and music sympathetically resonate. Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. The soundtrack for The Substance (2024) shrieks with the strings and sudden dissonances of The Nightmare and Dawn (taken from Bernard Herrmann's score for Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo). Then, it deepens the sense of disquiet with the sinister incantations and medieval-sounding harmonies of Swedish composer Anna von Hausswolff's Ugly and Vengeful. Both soundtracks impressively succeed in doing what we expect gothic music to do: provoke unease, create suspense and drive home the horror elements. But has the music of the gothic always been called upon to unsettle and scare? Has it always sounded so, well, gothic? These are questions I explore in my new book The Music of the Gothic 1789–1820. Over the last few years, I've been rummaging through archives in London, Oxford and Dublin searching for settings of songs from novels and music associated with gothic plays such as The Mysteries of the Castle (1795). I uncovered many treasures, some of which probably haven't been performed for a couple of centuries. Thanks to a grant from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, I was able to bring some of this music to audiences once more with the help of a group of wonderful musicians, headed by Seb Gillot, who performed the tracks you can hear in this article. You can see them performing live below. The gothic novels and plays of the 1790s were populated by sweet-singing heroines and heroes. Among the music I encountered was a song by the composer and singer Harriet Abrams (c. 1758-1821), in which a woman imprisoned in a madhouse sweetly pleads with her cold-hearted jailer. I also found music for gothic plays by the Northumbrian William Shield (1748-1829) and the Irish tenor Michael Kelly (1762-1826), who wrote songs about jolly mariners , comic poachers_ and young peasant girls on their way back from market. None of this material sounded remotely what we would now describe as gothic. Even the music accompanying the entrance of a blood-covered ghost in The Castle Spectre (1798) was warm and stately – and singularly unterrifying. I realised that none of the music from the 1790s – a period when gothic was phenomenally popular – was intended to scare. On the contrary, it was called upon to provide relief from the scare. In late 18th-century gothic plays such as The Italian Monk (1797), music was associated with romance, comedy and sublime religious experience, but not horror or terror. At what point then did the kind of gothic music we know today come into being? The evidence can be found in books such as Remick Folio of Moving Picture Music (1914) which contains music for silent film accompanists. With names like Mysterioso, or Forboding and Wind Storm, or Hurry, they were evidently designed for scenes of suspense and mystery. Such music is indebted to the music of Victorian melodrama, but what I wanted to know was when melodrama acquired its distinctive gothic sounds. Very often in research you discover that things happen gradually. There is trial and experiment, a series of influences, a slow accumulation of examples, and then a tipping point. But when it comes to gothic music, that is not the case. There is a definite date when a specific kind of music erupted onto the entertainment scene. The date was 1802, and the occasion a new dramatic production – a 'melo-drame' or musical drama called A Tale of Mystery with music by Thomas Busby. Busby's music was conceptualised very differently to the music of the 1790s. For a start it was intended to add to, not to provide relief from, the gothic elements of the play. Most crucially, it was not part of the imagined world of the drama. The fictional characters did not sing it – they did not even 'hear' it: Busby's music was directed at the audience. Instrumental music calculated to disturb, it was chaotic and unnerving, with lots of fast, disjointed short phrases, disturbing chords and cliffhanger endings. Instantly recognised as new and revolutionary, it caused a sensation. After audiences had a taste of the new gothic in A Tale of Mystery, music on the page and on the stage soon became something darker and more troubling. The older kind of music didn't disappear overnight, of course, but melodrama took hold and the music of gothic was transformed. Not just on stage but also on the page. Gothic music was no longer uplifting but sinister. As seen in The Woman in Black (2012), there's nothing like a music box in a deserted house to terrify audiences. And who doesn't thrill to the sound of the diabolically thundering organ in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera? This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Emma McEvoy received a research grant from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust for the project "The Music of Gothic Literature and Theatre 1790-1820".
