Kate makes her mark in Druid’s revival of comic drama ‘Furniture’

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Kate Kennedy is taking a walk on the Cliffs of Moher when she answers her mobile phone to the Tribune. The US-born, English-raised actress is touring Ireland with Druid Theatre’s revival of Sonya Kelly’s hilarious play, Furniture, one of the big hits of last year’s Arts Festival, which returns to Galway this weekend.

Kate has plenty of theatrical experience, mostly in the UK, where critic Lynn Gardiner of The Guardian detected “shades of a young Natasha Richardson” in one of her performances.

She has never been on tour before but is enjoying the experience thoroughly. It’s also Kate’s first time working with the Galway company. She and Druid regular Rory Nolan are playing Alex and Ed in the first of the three mini-plays that make up Furniture.

Last summer’s premiere of Furniture featured Clare Monnelly and Peter Campion as Alex and Ed, a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary by visiting an exhibition of classical 20th Century furniture.

Those actors couldn’t return for the revival so re-casting was required. Rory Nolan is a member of the Druid Ensemble and was available so that was straightforward.

The role of Alex, a confident professional woman, came Kate’s way after Furniture’s author, Sonya Kelly, saw her in The Cat’s Mother at the Dublin Fringe Festival in September – it had transferred from Edinburgh. Sonya knew Kate would be perfect as Alex, a role which involves razor-sharp dialogue.

Kate fitted the bill on the repartee front and also when it came to creating an immediate impression on stage. Her height alone (6’3’) guarantees that. She laughs as she recalls “growing 10 inches during one summer when I was a teenager”, but it’s clear Kate is very happy to be on the tall end of the spectrum. It’s more a benefit on stage than in film and TV, she adds, but it’s no bad thing.

Of the six original actors in this blackly funny drama about furniture and people who obsess over it, only Niall Buggy and Garret Lombard remain. They play a flamboyant, dying actor and his strait-laced solicitor nephew in the final act.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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