INTERVIEW: Belle Aykroyd on making Eugene O’Neill’s words resonant in 2022
Photo: Belley Aykroyd portrays Sara in A Touch of the Poet at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
Eugene O’Neill’s acclaimed drama A Touch of the Poet continues through Sunday, April 17 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City. In the classic piece, Robert Cuccioli plays Cornelius Melody, a tavern owner in Boston, circa 1828. Family issues become complicated when Cornelius’ daughter, Sara (Belle Aykroyd), falls in love with a wealthy American guest of the pub, according to press notes. The dynamic between father and daughter propels the drama and intrigue of the story.
Aykroyd has been working on this production for quite some time, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. She first auditioned for the role more than two years ago, and it was to be her first major role out of grad school. One day before her and the company were headed into tech rehearsals, March 2020 happened, and the production was delayed indefinitely.
“I’m familiar with Eugene O’Neill,” Aykroyd said in a recent phone interview. “I was classically trained, so I’ve done a lot of reading of Long Day’s Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. The writing is so delicious. So when I got the audition, I read the play, but I hadn’t known about it before then. And then I read the play, and the language was so rich. It’s like poetry. You almost have to fight against the poetry of the language. I had to find ways to break up the rhythm because it’s so frankly dense, and you’re reading it on the page, and it reads like poetry. You say it out loud, and it sounds like poetry. I had to find ways to make it sound human in a way, make it translate so an audience could hear it.”
Aykroyd sees Sara as a woman who is a fighter and a dreamer. The character has ambitions and sees a future for herself, and it is this forward-thinking quality of the role that inspires Aykroyd. “She talks so much about dreaming,” the actor said. “She’s just strong in herself. She knows what she wants. She knows where she’s going. She’s an inspiring character. She’s very, very dear to me, and she has a lot of strength and bite that is unlike [me]. I’m kind of soft, and so I’ve learned a lot from her hardness.”
When audience members head to the Irish Rep to enjoy this production, they will likely feel like a real family is on the stage. That is because of the hard work of the actors in the company, under the direction of Ciarán O’Reilly, co-artistic director of the theater company. One positive of the pandemic delay was that it strengthened the bond amongst the actors.
“We’re lucky in that the two years we’ve spent working on this project has made it very easy to have real, organic love between the cast, I think,” Aykroyd said. “We went through this huge, life-altering, world-altering event together, and then we came back two years later. And it was a bit like a family reunion, so I admire and look up to and love my counterparts on that stage. It’s been a masterclass working with Bob Cuccioli. Oh, wow. So I have this admiration for him that I think Sara has for her father, and being up on stage, I feel held by the actors and I felt held by our director and able to explore. The relationship between Bob and I, I think, is a mutual respect that translates on stage. We are tough on each other. We are hard on each other. And every night we get off the stage, and we make sure to hug because we are mean. It’s actually the coarseness that’s difficult. The love is present. It’s the coarseness. Sometimes I look at him, and he’s so heartbreaking to me that I don’t want to have to be mean to him. But the lines are biting.”
Aykroyd and the company members worked with a dramaturg two years ago to better understand this time in American history. They are portraying an Irish immigrant family in the early part of the 19th century, and there’s a lot of nuance they need to figure out on accents and dialects. But the preparation went beyond the comprehension of 1828 and also centered on the comprehension of 2022.
“Think of what’s happened in the last two years,” she said. “We had George Floyd and all of these racial issues coming up and issues of identity and immigration and things that are in this play. What I’ve been working on is trying to make it feel like a contemporary person is standing up on that stage talking to you, a person from 2022.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
A Touch of the Poet, featuring Belle Aykroyd, continues through Sunday, April 17 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
