Tyranny of the majority

In the play An Enemy of the People, one man stands for right, says Pádraic Killeen.

FOR a decade, Declan Conlon has been one of the country’s foremost stage actors. For his celebrated turn in the Abbey’s sumptuous production of Tom Murphy’s The House, Conlon won ‘best actor’ at the Irish Theatre Awards. Having just performed in Drum Belly in the Abbey, Conlon is back onstage this week at the Gate Theatre, playing the lead in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

The production is based on Arthur Miller’s 1950 adaptation of the play, set against the Cold War paranoia in the US. Concerned about a toxic hazard in the public baths that have made his sleepy hamlet a rich tourist spot, the play’s central character, Dr Thomas Stockmann, stands up against his own community. Irish audiences will detect undertones of the latter days of the Celtic Tiger, when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern dismissed sceptics.

Conlon says the conscientious Stockmann is not simply a moral champion, but awash in his own vanities and failings. “He’s not just a likeable guy,” says Conlon. “He’s got a big ego. At the beginning of the play, he takes great delight in having all these young liberals and radicals around him — people who are the antithesis of his brother and the ruling elite of the town. He sees himself as the centre, a sort of a sun around which all these planets orbit. And the way that he goes about discovering that the baths are poisoned, and then communicating it to the town, is not terribly subtle. He could do it in a much better way. So the audience should be confused about him.”

That nuance in the character is vital, says Conlon. “Otherwise, it’s just preachy,” he says. “That’s always the danger with a play like this — that it becomes preachy — and we really don’t want it to be.”

The play hinges on Stockmann’s demonstration of huge personal integrity. “It means so much to him to have the respect and friendship of the people in the town,” says Conlon. “And, yet, when it’s all taken away, he still holds on to the idea that we can’t peddle poison to people for profit. So I admire him, complicated and all as he is. There’s a great line in the play, where he’s speaking at a public meeting. He says, ‘It’s always the same. Rights are sacred until it hurts for somebody to use them’. That’s a great line and it’s the kernel of the play. We all believe in democratic rights, but when those rights are affecting profit margins and government balance sheets and jobs, and all the other things that people rely on, where do you put those rights? That’s a very relevant question.”

While Conlon has a lock on his character’s psychology, as an actor he works ‘from the outside in’, finding the rhythm that makes every character distinct. “Characters have very different and distinctive rhythms,” he says. “With certain pieces, there’s a very clear psychology to the character. But, at other times, and even within the same show, by focusing on a character’s rhythm and embracing that, all sorts of psychologies will suggest themselves to you. Things come to you from the energy of the character that you might not necessarily have arrived at had you been sitting down trying to work it out. And that’s where acting is really good fun, as well, and where a performance can take off a bit.”

Conlon’s career took off after he graduated from Trinity College’s acting course two decades ago. Following a long stint in the UK, he returned to Ireland in 2003 and has become a fixture of the stage, distinguishing himself, including in a number of Tom Murphy plays.

In his teens, Conlon boarded for six years in St Jarlath’s School, in Murphy’s home town of Tuam. Did that give him a window into Murphy’s work. “I don’t know,” he says. “Again, it might come down to understanding certain rhythms. But I’m from Loughrea, and Loughrea is not all that dissimilar from Tuam. They’re both east Galway. One is hurling and one is football, but they’re similar places. But I think it would be reductive to say that it’s because I’m from the West of Ireland, that I might have a window on Tom’s work. Tom’s work is universal. You could bring in an actor from anywhere and they’ll be able to appreciate it, regardless.”

Conlon would like to make more forays into film and television. Soap fans will recall his stint as psychic Turlough Norris in Fair City a few years ago, while later this year he’ll be seen in RTÉ’s long-delayed drama series Amber. Yet the actor’s focus remains the theatre. After Enemy of the People, he returns to Quietly, Owen McCafferty’s recent hit, which the Abbey are bringing to Edinburgh in August. Following that, he’ll be back in the Abbey in Frank McGuinness’s new play The Hanging Gardens.

“I just love that sense of adventure in theatre, when you’re tackling something in a rehearsal room and you’re working on it every day,” says Conlon. “And there’s this great release when you’re on stage at the beginning of an evening, and you know nobody’s going to shout ‘cut’ and that the choices you make are going to be yours alone.”

* An Enemy of the People runs at the Gate Theatre, May 23 – Jul 13