Pig and Runt hit Cork again: Meet the new stars of Disco Pigs
Aoise Meaney as Runt and Séamus McLean Ross as Pig in the upcoming production of Disco Pigs at the Everyman in Cork. Picture: Marcin Lewandowski
Sometimes the stars really do align. When Aoise Meaney and Séamus McLean Ross were chosen from the hundreds of candidates who applied for the roles in the 30th anniversary production of nobody on the production team twigged the duo shared the same birthday.
Both were born on November 26, 2000. That’s a decent coincidence by any measure, but it takes on a whole other level of significance considering the characters the duo are playing were also born on the same day.
Pig and Runt. Two 16-year-olds speaking their own hybrid language on a mad night out in Pork City. Made famous in 1996 by Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh in local theatre company Corcadorca’s hugely-successful production.
Playwright Enda Walsh has returned to Leeside to direct the two-hander at the Everyman, and when we visit rehearsals in the old Thompsons building on MacCurtain Street, it feels like he has already built quite the rapport with his new charges. There are plenty of laughs as the Dublin-born creative guides them through some of the scenes he wrote while living in Cork all those years ago.
And the actors clearly aren’t over-awed by the reputation of their director. The 59-year-old may have earned international renown for his work on stage and screen productions, including a collaboration with David Bowie, but the cast members are comfortable throwing in suggestions and attempting to put their own stamp on the characters.
can’t be an easy script to learn. Written phonetically, it sounds like a strange take on a form of Corkonian pidgin. Random sample: “Yeah das righ. Saar something in front of her. Ders a mirror, look! Pig who dat beautifirl pair?”
Meaney recalls seeing the script for the first time. “You're like, what the hell is this!? And I see that in everybody's faces every time I ask them to like help me test my lines too,” laughs the 25-year-old Clare woman.
However, she does point out that slightly opaque nature of the dialogue is so important for the personal world the characters have created for themselves. “The beauty of it is that other people aren't supposed to get it so easily. Runt and Pig do get it.”
For Scottish actor Ross, his ADHD adds another layer of difficulty for learning off such tricky lines. While he admits he doesn’t love learning by wading through pages of script, he did dive into Walsh’s words before arriving in Cork. The clips of the original production that can be found online were also useful, but it’s obvious he’s much happier at this stage of the rehearsal process.
“I love to play it, and I love being on my feet,” he says, switching back to his Scottish accent after the Leeside twangs we heard a few minutes earlier in the rehearsal. “I just fell in love with the Cork accent. It's got such a melody in it, and it's so fun to do.”
Ross, the more experienced of the two actors, says he has never connected so well with a character as he has with Pig. “I really find it quite easy to match his energy and his impulsiveness,” he explains.
In hindsight, there’s a case to made that Walsh had created a neurodiverse character in an era when nobody had even heard the term. Those who went to school in the 1990s or previous decades probably recall somebody like Pig. Heart of gold, but prone to getting into all sorts of unnecessary trouble. Back then, more likely to get suspensions or a criminal record than empathy and learning support.
While the two actors have a dialogue coach to help them wrestle with the script, they are also benefitting from being immersed in the city where was born. Every day, they bounce lines off each other in their shared city-centre apartment, and soak up the rhythms and sounds around town.
Cork is quite a different place now to the pre-latte era of the mid-1990s, but obviously some of that spirit has endured.
“I like to go to like a clothes shop and just sit in the dressing room and listen to other people's conversations,” says Meaney, who has also been honing her ear by catching Corkonian podcast
A planned visit to Turner’s Cross to sample the local football culture might not have materialised but, while in Cork, Ross has been keeping a close eye on his beloved Dundee United. While he hasn’t been able to enjoy the types of trophy celebrations his Glasgow mates take for granted, he has experienced the special buzz of the Tangerines adopting a song by his parents as the club anthem. Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh are members of Scottish band Deacon Blue, best known for 1988 hit and whose debut single is part of almost every game at Tannadice Park.
“Me and my dad have season tickets, so it's pretty class to sing that as the players walk out,” says Ross. “I listen to music all the time, and it's great when I can go away and I can still hear my mum and dad's voice and songs.”
Raised in the parish of Barefield near Ennis, Meaney didn’t quite have the same showbiz background. However, she says being one of four children under the age of five ensured her early years had “plenty of theatrics”.
Encouraged by her parents — builder father Michael who now works with Limerick County Council, and mother Sharon, manager at Clare Volunteer Centre — Aoise also singles out school teacher Kate Corrigan for nurturing her inclinations towards acting.
Despite enjoying her roles in school productions and eventually ending up at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, Meaney almost took a different route when it came to the crossroad of college choices.
“I was going to come to Cork to do criminology here, but then covid happened. I think the thing that was drawing me into that world was similar to what was drawing me into acting, which was just understanding people's point of view and putting yourself in people's shoes and understanding why they do what they do,” she reflects.
Witnessing the Clare actress getting into her stride as Runt, it’s difficult to believe this is just her first professional acting role. Ross, meanwhile, is already into the second season of spin-off We’ll also see him next year alongside Isla Fisher and Colin Firth in an autobiographical tale from British filmmaker Lorna Tucker.
In the meantime, they’ll be hoping the stars continue to move in the right direction and they get to make magic in a classic Cork play.
- runs at the Everyman, Cork, from October 31 to November 14. Bookings open now via everymancork.com
Enda Walsh did have some things to consider before deciding to return to Cork and direct his breakthrough play for the first time on its 30th anniversary, but he was never worried his piece would feel out of date.
Yes, the story of Pig and Runt is set in 1996, and features teenagers who aren’t welded to their phones and who make reference to the likes of Sonia O’Sullivan and Dinny Irwin. But fears might be of its time? Not at all.
“I think it operates like there’s no nostalgia to it,” says Walsh during a break in rehearsals. “When we made it first, the world of it was tiny. It was two Cork people talking about Cork. Can it get much smaller than that, like it had a sort of like an almost parochial sort of like thing to it. But actually, that was its strength.”
The hyper-local aspect of did indeed help give it universal appeal as the play hit phenomenal levels of success, and provided a breakthrough moment for Walsh, as well as original director Pat Kiernan, and young stars Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh.
The 59-year-old adds he has had no urge to adjust any aspect of his seminal work for the upcoming revival, but veterans of that first run at the Triskel and elsewhere may notice differences.
“There's nuance in it that I wasn't aware of first time around, only because I didn't direct it. So that was interesting. Productions just build their own logic — they sort of they just build their own expression, depending on who's in the room.”
