Culture That Made Me: Pat Kinevane on Schitt's Creek, Kate Bush and Emily Bronte
Pat Kinevane, Cobh actor.
Pat Kinevane is an actor from Cobh, Co Cork. He will perform his new play, Before, with music from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Sunday, 8pm, 4 July, as part of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival. Available to stream via www.junctionfestival.com
During the whole lockdown, I needed something that would make me happy so I watched a lot of comedy. It was a thing that could snap me straight out of a lull. One of the best series I saw on TV – and it probably will become a classic – was Schitt’s Creek. Each episode is only 20 minutes long so you can binge on it or you can watch one and laugh your head off and then hold on until the next day. The humour and the writing is so clever. I hate cleverality in writing, but this was so clever there was no sign of cleverness in it. They went through so many drafts on it that they completely disguised the art of writing that goes on behind a show like it. I loved it.
One of the shows that smacked me across the head – and it was before I went into the business of acting myself – was Steven Berkoff’s Salomé at the Gate Theatre in 1988. Subsequently, I ended up in it when it was re-staged. I was just a gossoon. It starred Olwen Fouéré, Barbera Brennan, Joe Savino, with Alan Stanford as Herod. It was astonishing, one of those productions that was elegant yet filthy – the undertow of it. It was so decrepit. It was meant to shock, but it was also meant to break your heart and it did. It was all in slow motion, two hours of it. It was one of those gob-smacking pieces of theatre. I’ll never forget it.
One of my favourite films from a performance point of view is A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois. She was amazing. She had the right amount of residual beauty, but also you could tell that she was on the cusp of losing it all. And Brando was amazing too. I remember a brilliant scene between her and the gentleman caller, Karl Malden. He was really distinctive looking. His nose was magnificent. I remember watching the film and I could feel the humidity. It was nearly better than watching it on stage.
A film that blew my head off – for the laughter and the darkness – was What Happened to Baby Jane? It was so cruel a movie, and two brilliant performances. Two actors that hated each other on the set – Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and it comes across on screen. It adds to the drama in it. Crawford was amazing, but a complete narcissist. Her daughter wrote a book about her behaviour. She was a horrible mother. She was married to the chief exec of Pepsi so she insisted that a Pepsi machine was installed in the studio during the filming so what did Bette Davis do? She got a Coca-Cola one installed as well. There’s no doubt Bette Davis was the better actor of the two.
Niall Buggy is still one of my favourite actors ever. If I was half as good as him, I’d die happy. He’s an extraordinary Abbey Theatre actor, and has been a huge success in the West End and Broadway. He's a stunning performer. He had everything on stage – the most brilliant presence, the most brilliant physicality, the most brilliant voice. He had extraordinary strength and charisma on stage, but also incredible sensitivity and vulnerability, particularly as a male performer. He's not afraid to crack up, to open his chest out. That is a very rare thing to see. It’s the thing with great actors – I expect a stoic performance, but when they surprise me by not being stoic, it wrecks my head in a good way.
Olwen Fouéré in the premiere of Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats in 1998 was amazing. It was visceral stuff. She hit it down the line, delivering aces on the court constantly. Bang. Bang. Bang. She’s a great friend, an extraordinary woman, a beautiful creature of an actress. She's half-Irish, half-French – she grew up in Ireland to Breton parents. She brings all the sensibility of that into her work. She’s the perfect union of Irish and continental flair.
I remember seeing a dance production, Beauty of the Beast, at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015. There were six dancers in the cast, but Lee Clayden’s solo was phenomenal. It blew my mind. I was captivated. I was probably in there for about an hour and it felt like I was in there for about a minute. It had a really strange effect on me. I kind of lost time completely. I didn't know where it was.
For music, my go-to would be Kate Bush. She re-released all her stuff a few Christmases ago. Everything was remastered. I bought the lot. I was delighted with myself. I always felt an affinity with her. Her mama was from Waterford. Ever before I knew this, I loved the abandonment in her music, but I always got the Celtic vibe in her music too. Then, after being a fan for ages, I found out she worked, particularly on Hounds of Love, with a lot of traditional musicians like John Sheahan and Dónal Lunny, and with arrangements by Bill Whelan. The Irish contingent blended beautifully with her compositions. John Sheahan and Bill Whelan often talked to me about how wonderful an artist she is, and how kind and imaginative. She is a genius.
A book I love for its complete wildness and anti-hero stuff is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It reminded me of Ireland when I read it at school and afterwards I re-read it so many times. The poeticism of it is pure Irish and the moors could have been up in Mitchelstown. And the pathetic fallacy in it – when I was reading the book, I could really feel the weather, especially growing up in a harbour town like Cobh. You’d hear the wind. You’d hear the rain. You knew before you got up what it was going to be like outside – squally rain, dampness and typhoons. That’s why it really hit me. She got the mood of passion and broken hearts and love and hate in it so beautifully.
