Domhnall thriving as he gives his all to Medicine

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“It’s a strange one to talk about,” says actor Domhnall Gleeson of Enda Walsh’s latest play, Medicine, which opens at the city’s Black Box Theatre this week as part of Galway International Arts Festival.

Medicine, a co-production between the Festival and Landmark Productions, features Domhnall as John Kane, a patient in a psychiatric hospital. Aoife Duffin and Renmore woman Clare Barrett also feature in this dark comedy which Domhnall regards “as being a play about care and love . . .which is touching and also funny”. Jazz musician Seán Carpio adds another layer as he accompanies the actors in this exploration of how society has traditionally treated people that are regarded as ‘mentally ill’.

Although it has its absurdist moments, Medicine is “more feet-on-the-ground” than other of Enda Walsh’s works, such as Ballyturk and Arlington, according to Domhnall.

But in case people think the Dublin-born playwright is going all conventional, the actor adds, “there is a lobster in it”. So, not conventional then.

“But the room you are looking at feels like a real room, unlike Ballyturk,” he explains, referring to the moment at the end of that play where the back wall falls away, bringing the audience into a surreal outside space.

“Ballyturk is one of my favourite plays,” says Domhnall. “And I love Cillian Murphy as an actor.”

Domhnall knows Enda Walsh’s writing from a performance perspective too. In 2015, he appeared with his father Brendan and brother Brian in The Walworth Farce at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre.

That was before anyone had heard of Covid, when “we were playing to 1,200 people every night and everyone was on your side”. He loved it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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