I was one of the men in The Second Woman. This is what it was like...

The Second Woman at Cork Midsummer Festival featured Eileen Walsh in a repeated scene with 100 different people across 24 hours. Alan O'Riordan was one of those who took to the Opera House stage for the incredible piece of theatre

Mon, 16 Jun, 2025 - 12:35

Alan O’Riordan

I’ve just arrived backstage at Cork Opera House, where I’ll be taking part in the big event of the city’s Midsummer Festival, indeed, the year in theatre. The Second Woman is an endurance theatre piece by Australian duo Nat Randall and Anna Breckon which pairs the redoubtable Eileen Walsh with 100 different performers for a short scene played out repeatedly over 24 hours. The mind boggles at the demands on her, the body trembles at the thought of taking part.

The reassuring stage directors run us through our marks, telling us, no matter what, to have fun. One goes to the “noodle room”, as she jokingly calls it, and picks one of the dozens of small bags containing chopsticks and takeaway cartons. There are kettles there too, for the tea that’ll masquerade as the whiskey being drunk in the scene. I glance at the script for the last time. I’m Martin. We all are. Walsh is Virginia. A couple at the end of an affair is the most straightforward reading, although we Martins are invited to fill in the gaps or improvise.

I’m ushered down to the wings, where more jolly and reassuring stage managers await. X marks the spot behind a doorway into the unknown (we participants are not allowed see the scene before we play it).

Alan O'Riordan, arts journalist, was one of 100 people to interact with Eileen Walsh on stage in The Second Woman.

After a count in, I open the door. I find a pink box of a room, narrowing the Opera House stage. Walsh stands with her back to me. She’s in a red dress, hair peroxide blonde. It’s like stepping into a David Lynch film. Indeed, two cameras are recording us for a screen projection, though I hardly notice.

I make my way over to her and whisper my real name into her left ear, as instructed. Worryingly, I detect an unmistakable look of wild mischief from the Cork actress. Uh-oh, I think, she won’t be playing it straight at all! There goes my plan!

My take on Martin is sincere; rather dull, if truth be told. But I try to make it about her more than myself. This works against the script somewhat, since it has Virginia asking Martin how he feels, what he thinks. It casts her as abject (“I don’t deserve you”, “You don’t find me attractive anymore”, “You don’t think I’m good enough”), and Martin as the smug, oblivious male.

I go make drinks, come back to continue our conversation. We eat the noodles that will sustain Walsh through her task. I lean in and kiss her on the cheek. She stretches her legs across and puts them in my lap. Our tete-a-tete ends with me covered in the noodles, thrown by Virginia. There’s a bit of a dance. Then, sweet release, Virginia says Martin should go, offering him a €50 note for an unexplained reason. “I love you,” I say, and I’m out the door. Done. Phew.

A scene from The Second Woman. Picture: Jed Niezgoda

Turns out I was last up before one of the 15-minute intervals that come every couple of hours in the 24-hours piece that ran from 4pm Saturday to 4pm Sunday. So, as I walk around from Half Moon Street to Emmet Place, I get a few “Well dones”. Well, they can’t all be lying, I say to myself, coasting on adrenaline and feeling in lively form as a result. I join the audience until about 3.30am.

The cumulative effect across the hours creates a kind of intimacy, a sense of journey shared with Walsh. People in the audience are privileged to see the scene in context; none of the participants are. So differences of interpretation, in how Walsh reacts, her face in closeup on a screen, become funnier with each hour. More absurd, playful.

Some participants play it for laughs, others as a comment on this whole enterprise. Still others go full douchebag: knowingly, with comic pomposity, or with an alarming ‘what is he thinking?’ narcissism. One such is led out by his tie, another wears a T-shirt saying “Women are born to serve men”. Another seems to have wandered in from a Sam Shepard play, all toxic masculinity.

Walsh rises to such affronts, shifting the power dynamic with undercutting mimicry, or an improvised, withering put-down, reasserting control. But often you can feel the relief and freedom that comes when she recognises a fellow professional: Marty Rea, for instance, with whom the dance gets wild, and horizontal. Or Laurence Kinlan, in a tearful, gentle scene.

Eileen Walsh receives a standing ovation at the end of The Second Woman.

There’s a handful of women too, while a charming turn by the septuagenarian Welsh actor Karl Johnson shows you don’t have to come off like a jerk. More familiar faces included Glanmire actor Eanna Hardwicke, Jack Gleeson of Game Of Thrones, and dance maestro Luke Murphy, or local notables like Gerry Kelly, of the Cork Pops Orchestra.

There are hoots of delight when Walsh’s Scottish husband, Stuart McCaffer, comes through the door. It’s this variety that makes it all so addictive, that makes the hours fly by. It’s dramatic roulette. You never know what’s coming next.

But really, it’s all about Walsh. This is a masterclass of her craft. You can only marvel at her responsiveness and creativity. As for weariness, that, too, becomes her weapon. A heaviness of eye, a roll of the neck, or a slow-limbed gesture: these become simply more tools to be used, before she startles you again with wild energy. It’s an astounding achievement.