Michael Patric: From Oscar fun to the bittersweet tale of Mallow Sugar Factory
Newmarket actor Michael Patric performs in Sugar, as part of West Cork Fit-up Festival.
Taking the ferry to islands off West Cork and pitching up in community halls as part of the West Cork Fit-Up Theatre Festival is a far cry from being feted at the Oscars in Los Angeles. But for Newmarket-born actor, Michael Patric, it’s all part of the unpredictable – and sometimes exciting - life of an actor.
Patric, who stars in his self-penned one-man show, Sugar, in West Cork, is full of enthusiasm for the travelling theatre festival, founded by Geoff Gould in 2009. It brings plays to rural communities (there is also the Blackwater Fit-Up Festival earlier in the year), with a nod to the fit-up shows in 1950s Ireland.
Patric’s play is about the last days of the sugar factory in Mallow, where (in real life) he served an apprenticeship as a fitter before training to be an actor. Never in his wildest dreams did the lad from Newmarket see himself rubbing shoulders on the red carpet with Hollywood stars.
But that’s what panned out when he travelled to LA last year as part of the contingent for the Irish language film, An Cailín Ciúin, based on the novella, Foster, by Claire Keegan. Nominated for an Oscar, the low-budget film saw Patric playing a neglectful unpleasant father whose young daughter, Cait, is dispatched to stay with relatives during the summer holidays.
For a while after the hype surrounding this unlikely hit film, Patric was accosted in supermarkets. “People were saying how could I treat my children like that? I’d respond in a way that wasn’t the character and they’d get it and change tack. I’m always amused by this. That character more than any others I’ve played, they just hated him. I played a character in Frontier, a Netflix series, who was a psychopath and committed murder.
"But people liked him. If you compare that character with the father in An Cailín Ciúin, the guy in Frontier was much worse. But I think because of the malevolence towards a child, the father character was seen as so undesirable.”
What frustrated Patric after the success of An Cailín Ciúin was being offered auditions to play characters like that nasty father. “That role is not anywhere near my strengths as an actor. I was saying ‘no’ to a lot of the auditions. I just found the whole experience so narrow-minded and lacking in imagination. Sometimes you just have to do your own thing and wait for it to pass away.”
However, Patric enjoyed being at the Oscars. “The bizarre thing about it is that it’s unreal, not your normal situation. I remember sitting at the bar of our hotel having lunch with a Canadian actor friend when a voice from beside us asked if we were done with the menu and could she have it. That voice belonged to Brooke Shields.”
At various parties during the heady week, Patric was surrounded by famous faces. “But I would never approach anyone because I feel they have enough invasion of their privacy.”
It was at the age of twenty-five that Patric started to train as an actor at the Gaiety School of Acting. “I knew half way through my apprenticeship at the Mallow Sugar Factory that being a fitter was not what I wanted to do.”
Describing himself as having been a shy teenager, Patric recalls taking part in a sketch show he wrote for a school concert. He also did impersonations of his teachers. “It was the first time I ever felt in full control of myself. I knew there was something in it but I didn’t know how to harness it or go about it.”
But Patric’s talent was spotted by Michael O’Halloran who ran the local drama group in Newmarket. He invited Patric to join. That led to him taking part in amateur drama festivals. One of the adjudicators, Patrick Sutton, who used to run the Gaiety School of Acting, encouraged Patric to pursue acting.
And the rest is a CV that includes 12 years in Vancouver, acting in TV dramas and films as well as playing the sergeant in the RTÉ drama, Smother, and writing a play about Sean Moylan, the Irish revolutionary.
In Dublin when the pandemic hit, Patric was unable to return to Canada. But that was fortuitous because he got cast in An Cailín Ciúin through a taped audition. All in a day’s work for this versatile actor.
- Sugar opens on Heir Island on July 16; followed by performances in Kilcrohane Hall on July 17; Glengarriff Hall on July 18, Sherkin Island on July 19; the Lecture Theatre on Bere Island on July 20; and Ballydehob Hall on July 21. For the full programme, go to www.fit-uptheatrefestival.com
