Eileen Walsh: Cork actress on Brenda Fricker, Disco Pigs, and upcoming projects
Last year Eileen Walsh fulfilled a personal goal to star in The Second Woman, a marathon 24-hour play in Cork. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan.
The day after Brenda Fricker’s funeral, Eileen Walsh is speaking warmly and fondly of the Irish acting icon, who she crossed paths with over the years.
She particularly remembers working on a radio play with Fricker, where the cast were asked to create background noise and banter as part of the recording. “There were a couple of scenes in a pub and down on the docks, and so everybody was asked to do little chatty noises in the background. Brenda would forever go: ‘Woof!’ and then say: ‘Ah, there's always a fucking dog!’,” laughs Walsh at the memory.
More recently, the two women corresponded about potentially working together on stage, and the Cork actress is sorry that it didn’t come to pass. “I thought it would be so beautiful to be on stage with her. She'll be sorely missed because there are very few like her. She really stayed true to who she was — that performance in is so grounded in a world that she knows. She was fearless, and I think that really showed through in all her work.”
Walsh, too, has become one of our most-loved stage and screen icons. After making her debut in Enda Walsh’s remarkable Disco Pigs opposite Cillian Murphy in the late 1990s, she has built an impressive career, recently reuniting with Walsh and Murphy for Small Things Like These, the acclaimed adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella.
This week, she featured in as part of The Boyne Valley International Film Festival, in partnership with LOVE Drogheda. Showcasing an array of local, national and international films, the festival creates an environment for filmmakers and audiences to connect and celebrate film in the historical medieval town of Drogheda, located in the heart of the Boyne Valley region.
Starring Moe Dunford and Toni O’Rourke, Shane O’Connor’s film centres on a father and husband struggling with a gambling addiction. Walsh got to know O’Connor through his work in stills photography on screen and in theatre.
“The candour with which he captured actors, I thought, actually, he'll probably have a lovely way with us on set. I felt the script was so delicately written. Often you can get quite a frazzled energy from a young director because they're eager and they're desperate — in a good way — to get hold of the reins. Shane doesn't have that energy about him. He's very competent, capable.”
In the short film, Walsh plays a nurse guiding the former gambling addict at a crucial juncture in his life. “There are lots of personal decisions that you make with any film, big or small. But it felt to me that she was somebody who knew addiction from her own family.
"Just to be able to sit with it and know the cost of it is much more than this person lying in the bed. I think Shane really brought that to her character, her allowing him to have moments to think about what his kids need as well as himself.”
Building on the recent success of Walsh has enjoyed a busy creative period. Last summer she fulfilled a personal goal to star in a marathon 24-hour play in the city where she grew up.
as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, saw her star opposite 100 different men as she performed a scene between a man and a woman in a relationship that has lost its creativity and romance. It was inspired by John Cassavetes’ film Bringing the unique project to Cork Opera House was a special experience, she says.
“It is something that I had wanted to do from the moment I heard about the project in London with Ruth Wilson doing it. The idea, the concept, the original film behind it.”
What was the energy like in the room?
“You could feel the anticipation and also the trepidation from the audience as to who would be next. People were staying for such a long time, there weren't that many doors flipping for people in and out.”
She says performing in her home city became even more special through the challenging later hours.
“Every two hours I got a short break for a pee or to get notes, to re-touch make-up, brush my teeth, feel a bit fresher again, and in those five or six minute breaks, you would recharge a little bit.
She smiles at the memory.
“You could feel everyone's energy coming back at you, and the audience go: ‘Go on, Eileen!’ It was amazing, and what was really special was my two daughters were also there, and my youngest daughter hadn't seen me on stage for a long time. When I came to the bow, hers was the first eye that I saw. It meant so much that they were all there.”
She went to her mother’s Cork City home after the marathon performance ended to rest.
“I went to bed and had the weirdest sleep because I felt so full of adrenaline. But then my husband came upstairs with a chicken sandwich after a couple of hours, and I was like: ‘Oh, there's the best chicken sandwich in the world!’ Like that piece of toast you get after you've given birth.”
This autumn, Walsh will return to the stage with Druid Theatre in Galway and as part of The Dublin Theatre Festival. Eugene O’Neill’s is set over one day and night in rural Connecticut and tells of Josie, the last of her immigrant Irish family left at home with her father.
“I've wanted to do for a very long time,” says Walsh. “This beautiful, slow-paced journey through one night of a relationship would be such a task, and it's funny how you go: ‘Right — if you can do 24 hours, this is the next thing you're ready for.’”
Walsh will also star opposite Lewis Brophy and Barry Keoghan in which will have its world premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival in advance of its cinema run. Kim Bartley’s film is set amid Ireland’s care system.
“My sister is a social worker in child protection, and so I felt like there was a lot that I could bring to this. The role that I played for Kim in is this woman who has a tremendous amount of love for these very young, fragile clients and staff. Barry was brilliant, throwing himself in.”
Meanwhile, the play in which Walsh’s talent first shone through — — is returning to the Cork stage for a new 30th anniversary production. She is excited, she says, at the prospect of seeing new upcoming talent take on the story of Pig and Runt.
“I re-read it recently, thinking of all the stuff coming up about it — it’s a piece of fire, you know,” she says. “I think it still has that energy and that possibility about it to set the world on fire again — and whoever the two brilliant people are that get to do it, it'll be a total thrill.”
