Eileen Walsh: ‘My schooling was heavily church-ridden, so it informs a huge amount of my work’
Currently starring in The Boy: A Two-Play Theatrical Event at the Abbey Theatre, Eileen Walsh is exceptional in the role of Jocasta. She speaks with Sarah Gill about the love she has for her fellow theatremakers, the Catholic church’s shadow on much Irish art, and her learnings from a career spent between screen and stage.
Eileen Walsh is a woman who has spent much of her adult life either on stage or in front of the camera. The Cork native spent the past 30 years living in London, but is firmly back on home soil with a house in Dublin and a starring role in her old stomping ground, Ireland’s National Theatre.
“I just bought a house and am trying to move in while it’s half a building site, so there’s a lot going on,” Eileen tells me over the phone. “The girls are settling in, and the sea swimming has begun in earnest. It’s just so different. The neighbours are lovely, they salute me on the street. It’s hard to quantify it.”
Written by Marina Carr and directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, The Boy: A Two-Play Theatrical Event explores the timeless themes of power, legacy, family, and love. Running until November 1 at the Abbey Theatre, they can be enjoyed separately or experienced back-to-back for the full, epic story. Inspired by Sophocles’ Theban Trilogy, the first play, The Boy, introduces a family at the height of its power before things begin to unravel under the pressure of untold truths, while play two, The God and His Daughter, explores the consequences that continue into the next generation.
“Years ago, I did a Druid show that was a celebration of Tom Murphy while he was thankfully still with us. We did three Tom Murphy shows in one day, so you could go and see Whistle in the Dark, Conversations on Homecoming, and Famine,” Eileen says of the draw to a theatrical undertaking of this nature. “It turns one day into a theatre festival. It brings this amazing community feeling, you get to know everyone around you.”
Walsh has been working with Marina Carr for the past six years, and from the initial read-through, she was immediately on board. “The story of Oedipus is such a giant adventure that it can only be fully completed and rounded within two plays. It follows the story of the boy Oedipus, who was cursed as soon as he was born,” Walsh explains. “His father had an affair with a young boy, and that made the Gods unhappy. So the God said, any child that you bear from here on in will be cursed. He will kill his father and marry his mother, and so to prevent that from happening, his father believes that he has killed him. He has hung him on a tree, but the young boy survives, and inevitably has to live out the curse.”
Eileen plays the role of Jocasta, who spends her younger years desperately sad, longing for her lost baby, and years later, he comes back into her life unbeknownst to both of them and they fall madly in love. They’re forever drawn back to each other throughout their lives. The third part is the story of Antigone, the daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus, who challenges the King to allow for the burial of her brother within the city walls.
“It’s how one family’s curse is passed on and on and on throughout the generations, but how love constantly draws them back together, this need to be together,” Walsh explains. “What Marina has written is phenomenal and poetic and sexy and dangerous and dirty and all the good stuff that theatre should be.”
Marina Carr is a woman for whom Eileen holds great respect: “I would invariably drop everything to work with Marina. I love her, I love the way she writes for women that are fearless and brave and debauched, and I love how she doesn’t know where it comes from. She hands the work over to you, which is beautiful and trusting.”
Of working with director Caitríona McLaughlin for the first time, Eileen is relishing the freedom. “Initially, it’s very scary, because as an actor, you want rules and regulations, but the way she works is to allow you to have all this world to investigate, and by the time you get to the theatre, you’ve got all this background, all this planetary activity going on,” she says. “Caitríona somehow pulls things together and, suddenly, you start to see this shape come over everything.”
As for her co-star Frank Blake, who plays Oedipus and may be recognised from his roles in Blue Lights and Normal People, Eileen says: “My connection with Frank Blake has been a really beautiful, glowing, growing thing. He has a depth and an energy and a subtleness. I think he is an incredible actor at a pivotal point in his career.”
Over the course of her career, Eileen has played crucial roles in films like Small Things Like These, The Magdalene Sisters, and Anne — all of which are stories that deal with the dark shadow cast by the Catholic church.
“I think it can’t help but run through us all as Irish people. I grew up in the ‘80s. My schooling was heavily church-ridden, so it informs a huge amount of my work, whether it’s about stepping away from those boundaries or whether it’s stepping into it and discovering what they meant to us. I think for our sins, it’s very much part of who we are, trying to work our way out of it. It informs everything that we do. The church is just there all the time. I think it’s going to be omnipresent for a while yet. I look forward to diving deeper into it more, because it only frees us eventually, once we work our way out of it.”
For Eileen, acting and theatre and life in general are a constant stream of reference points — “Every book we’ve ever read informs the next piece that we create. My process is one of constant referencing,” — and with much acclaim and important work under her belt, I wonder if she has some pearls of wisdom she could pass on to those pursuing a career in the arts.
“We’re all finding out all the time. Whenever I feel I’m in a comfortable position, I’m not. It’s such an unknown to us all. The thing that I adore is somebody who is willing to give it a go. Sometimes, don’t question it. Just jump. To try it, to give your all, is a beautiful thing in a rehearsal room of trust. There is the opportunity to keep trusting every time you step out there with that person that you’re doing a scene with, and to feel the willingness to leap every time is beautiful. If I can find that in somebody else, it makes me re-find it in myself. That’s what I would offer and suggest each time: Just leap, just let’s go.”
Eileen Walsh shares her life in culture
The last thing I saw and loved… Janet McTeer in Phaedra at the National Theatre.
The book I keep coming back to… Madeline Miller wrote it, and it’s called Love Song for Achilles.
I find inspiration in… Frank McGuinness recently sent me his book of poetry, The River Crana. That led me to a novel called A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland.
My favourite film is… It’s called The Big Blue. It’s about free divers, and there’s a beautiful quote in it where one free diver tries to go too far and nearly dies, and basically, the other guy, who’s brilliant and can do it naturally, says to him: “Stop. Sometimes the water doesn’t want you.” I use that in theatre all the time. Sometimes when you have a bad night. Sometimes the theatre doesn’t want you. And that’s okay.
My career highlight is… Currently, watching the final scene of The God and His Daughter. Jane Brennan and Frank Blake have the final scene, and I want to clap louder than the audience. It makes me go, “I f*cking love acting.”
The song I listen to to get in the zone is… Shawn Colvin, ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome’.
The last piece of art I recommended is… Twenty years ago, at Dublin Theatre Festival, I saw Romeo Castellucci’s Tragedia Endogonidia. It blew me out of the water for what I wanted to do in theatre and I am constantly referencing it.
I never leave the house without… My old lady small umbrella, and in the last few years, my reading glasses.
My dream role would be… I adore Moon for the Misbegotten. I feel if I say it enough, I’ll eventually pull it into existence. And I’m claiming anything Marina writes in the future!
The best advice I’ve ever gotten… I do this amazing online yoga class with Cat Alip-Douglas, and she says: “I know sometimes it feels like you’re falling without a parachute, but I’m here to tell you there is no ground.” For art, that’s all we do. You’ve just got to keep falling.
The most challenging thing about being on stage is… One’s own fear. But really, what’s the worst that can happen? That you call for a line and the audience are thrilled? I’ve never been to see anything that’s gone a little wrong and not been delighted, so that’s okay too. Whatever happens is meant to happen.
After a show, I… Run for the DART! I’ll have a mug of peppermint tea to help me unwind.
The magic of theatre/acting to me is… I’m afraid of the dark. I always have been. For two and a half hours every night, I get to stand on a precipice and feel love.
Tickets for Marina Carr’s The Boy at the Abbey Theatre are available here.
Production imagery by Ros Kavanagh.
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