Eileen set to soar in Seagull

When Cork-born actress Eileen Walsh got a phone call from Druid’s Artistic Director Garry Hynes a few months ago, asking her to take part in the company’s next production – Thomas Kilroy’s version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull – Eileen didn’t hesitate.

“I knew it would be outdoors and Druid have a history of doing huge projects outdoors, successfully. So, I knew it would happen even if Covid went mad again,” she says. Eileen, who lives in London, had already seen a couple of projects fall by the wayside because of the pandemic, but this would be different, she knew.

She had another reason for accepting too – it would mean reuniting onstage with Marty Rea and Marie Mullen, performers for whom she has huge regard. Eileen previously worked with them on other Druid projects, including 2012’s acclaimed DruidMurphy, featuring three plays by Tuam writer, Tom Murphy. More recently, in 2019, she and Marty received rave reviews for their performances in Beginnings, a contemporary play about dating, at the Gate Theatre.

“Working with Marty is always a joy and working with Marie is also a draw,” Eileen says as she gets ready for the first ‘tech’ (technical rehearsal) in Coole Park outside Gort, where The Seagull is being staged, under strict adherence to Covid-19 guidelines.

“Yesterday, upstairs in the rehearsal space in Druid Theatre, we had a moment,” she adds with a laugh. “We were all in one room doing our lines together and the specialness of all – being double-vaxxed and working – wasn’t lost on us.”

Thomas Kilroy’s version of Chekhov’s tragicomedy premiered in London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1981. It’s set in a large country house in the West of Ireland at the time of the Irish literary Renaissance – which was when Chekhov had written the original. The Seagull is a play about family, love, theatricality and jealousy, set in a world where the Anglo-Irish ascendancy presided over the Irish peasantry. But, echoing the original, this was a world on the cusp of change.

Eileen plays Isobel Desmond, with Jack Gleeson (Game of Thrones) as her son Constantine,  both of whom are back from London to spend summer at this house – their ancestral home.

Read the full interview in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie