Hollywood star ready to go back on stage after six years

Date Published: 04-Jul-2011

By JUDY MURPHY

The Connacht Sentinel

Cillian Murphy hasn’t appeared on stage in six years, but now he’s back in style in Misterman, the flagship theatre show of this year’s Arts Festival.

At a press conference in the city yesterday Cillian who has appeared in a string of films, including Red Eye, 28 Days Later, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Batman Begins and Breakfast on Pluto compared the role to “jumping in at the deepest end of the theatrical swimming pool. And it’s cold”.

Written by Enda Walsh, Misterman is a one-man play in which Cillian takes on the role of Thomas McGill a disturbed loner trying to come to terms with a massive trauma in his life.

But while it’s a one-man play, Cillian plays multiple characters as Thomas recreates conversations he has had with a host of residents of the midlands town of Inishfree, from which he is running away.

The good news for Cillian and for those who’ll be attending Misterman in the Black Box is that while the pool is cold, “it’s getting warmer”.

The character he is playing is “funny and loveable but as you’d expect from Enda’s plays, he’s not all there,” according to Cillian who knows more about Enda’s plays than most.

The Cork singer turned actor got his first big break in 1996 when he starred in Disco Pigs alongside Eileen Walsh. The play, staged by Corcadorca Theatre Company, was written by Enda and directed by Pat Kiernan. Since then, Cillian has become a major player in the film world, but has retained his love for the theatre, appearing seven years ago in Druid Theatre’s production of The Playboy of the Western World.

And he and Enda have remained firm friends, living near each other in London.

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