Play reveals the hidden desire that exposes an unfulfilled wife
A YEAR ON from quietly stealing the show in the Abbey Theatre’s production of Heartbreak House, Aislín McGuckin is the centre of another summer extravaganza — the Gate Theatre’s new production of Ivan Turgenev’s comedy of manners, A Month in the Country.
As the bored wife of a Russian landowner, McGuckin again plays a woman of glamorous idleness and fierce wit — traits that the Fermanagh actress, with her striking good looks and elegance, can pull off with ease.
Yet, her character’s splendid inertia masks a deeper struggle with stifling confinement.
“Natalya has lived a life of privilege and culture,” says McGuckin.
“She’s a mother, but that doesn’t necessarily fulfil her, either. She employs a young man to tutor her child and she suddenly finds herself obsessed with him. In today’s terms, she’s entering mid-life crisis territory. Being 29 in 1840 is probably halfway through your life expectancy. So she’s looking at this 21-year-old, with desires she’s never really felt before and the play follows that journey and that descent into a kind of madness.”
Opening Night of #AMonthintheCountry is Sold Out! Preview tickets still available! Book Now! http://t.co/bpG5lzMxdY pic.twitter.com/t2CAM2iTnY
— Gate Theatre (@GateTheatreDub) July 3, 2015
The production employs Brian Friel’s celebrated translation of Turgenev’s original text. When Friel’s version was first produced at the Gate, in 1992, the Irish playwright described Natalya as a woman with a 20th century sensibility chafing against her place in 19th century patriarchal society.
“You certainly get a sense of the lack of freedom that women had,” says McGuckin.
“At one point, Natalya says, ‘And now it’s time to decide on the dinner menu’, and I feel that there’s such conflict in that line. It seems innocuous enough on the page, when you first read it, but, actually, that is the full range of choices that Natalya can make about her life in the house. And that’s debilitating for a woman who has intellect and passion. She’s a forward-thinking woman, who feels that she shouldn’t be constrained in this way.”
While it nurses a social critique, the play is primarily a comedy about the passions. Natalya’s burgeoning desire for the young Belyayev (Dominic Thorburn), in contest with the loves and rivalries of the other characters, exposes the explosive power of human emotion, something Friel brings to a high comic pitch.
“When it’s going well, it’s like a relay race, with each of us handing over this bomb to one another, seeing if it will detonate or not,” says McGuckin.
A couple of pics from 'A Month In The Country' pic.twitter.com/eTKnJqVYlq
— Peter O'Brien (@Peter_Obrien) July 3, 2015
Notably, McGuckin has worked on Friel productions in the past, appearing in Dancing at Lughnasa and The Home Place, in the Lyric in Belfast. She fondly recalls her interactions with the Derryman. “Brian was around for some of the previews of The Home Place and he was very generous with notes, giving help, and answering questions,” she says.
Based in England since training there in the early 1990s, McGuckin has carved out a distinguished career, working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. However, she and her husband, actor Aidan McArdle, moved their family back to Dublin last year and she has very quickly established herself on the local scene.
Of course, many will recognise the actor from her work in television, including long-running stints in Heartbeat and Holby City, and she is currently working on hit fantasy series, Outlander. Nevertheless, she prefers theatre to TV.
“I love to rehearse and to go on this expedition with the other actors,” she says. “You start off not knowing a great deal and, by the end, hopefully, you know a whole lot more. TV’s much more immediate and that has its own kick. And it is exciting. But my heart is in theatre.”
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