INTERVIEW: Exploring the character in ‘The Ferryman’ who is always listening
Photo: The Ferryman on Broadway stars, from left, Jack DiFalco and Ethan Dubin. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
The Ferryman is the Jez Butterworth import from London that continues to impress audience members and critics alike. The family saga, set against the Troubles in 1980s Northern Ireland, deals with the aftermath of violence and the possibility of redemption.
At the center of the drama, which continues to play a multi-month run at the Jacobs Theatre on Broadway, is Quinn Carney (Brian d’Arcy James), the patriarch of an extended family who is trying to prepare for the harvest season and also deal with the realities of his brother’s continued absence. What exactly happened to his brother some 10 years before the play begins is one of the chief mysteries of the show, which is directed by Sam Mendes.
Ethan Dubin, making his Broadway debut, plays Quinn’s nephew, Oisin Carney. His father is Quinn’s brother who has gone missing, and his mother is Caitlin Carney (Holley Fain). With great grief on his shoulders, Oisin often lurks around the Jacobs stage, dipping in and out of conversations, always listening and always keeping track of what’s said and by whom.
Dubin came to the play after an audition that he was surprised to hear about.
“I had heard of the show, but really didn’t know hardly anything about it,” Dubin said in a recent phone interview. “A friend of mine was actually recommending it to me, and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that sounds fun.’ Then I looked at my email, and I had an audition for it. So I went in and eventually got in front of Sam and had a dialogue session, and that was it.”
Dubin called The Ferryman an epic, complicated story, and his character of Oisin is at the nexus of the entire machine. He’s living inside layer after layer after layer of contradiction, an outsider looking in from afar.
“In trying to put out fires, he starts them,” Dubin said about the character. “Every time he doesn’t want to be the center of attention, he causes a scene in trying not to be. That’s something that I just really hold on to. I try to connect to his pain that his father has been missing for 10 years, and he’s sort of surrounded by a supportive environment. There’s lots of love in this Carney household, but in many ways, it feels like someone else’s love. I try to connect with the loneliness of that and the outsider and the possibilities, where he can look to for a father figure, for inspiration, for guidance.”
Oisin has a line in the play that is quite revealing, a sort of wakeup call for the entire Carney household: “Everyone here pretends there’s nothing going on, when I know exactly what’s going on.”
“I love that line because there’s an enigmatic quality to it,” he said. “What he has is this ability to be invisible and to disappear. All of this lurking and hiding, he finds power in all of these places, and … sometimes mistakenly sees a bigger picture, what’s behind all of what’s going on in his family — the good things and the bad things.”
Dubin’s Broadway debut has been a special experience for the young actor, who has appeared off-Broadway in Bobbie Clearly, Rancho Viejo and The World My Mama Raised. For Dubin, the stories of the actors who came before him on the Jacobs stage stick with him.
“There’s something about showing up to that theater every night, every day and just feeling the echoes of all the performances that have happened there before me and all these great stories that have been on that stage,” Dubin said. “There’s a feeling to a house like that. In some ways, any great story can be told in any number of places and still be the epic thing that it is. That’s the beauty of how well written this play is, but doing it in that house, with that kind of special feeling of just how many great stories have lived in that space, that’s a truly special feeling.”
For Dubin and the ensemble, which includes numerous actors, a live bunny and a live goose, there are many more stories to add to that legendary stage. The actor called the piece, at its heart, an ensemble play, one that relies on mutual support.
“Even though my character is often forgotten, it’s near impossible to forget about or feel like you don’t get a sense of just everybody up there,” he said. “I will add there are these moments of walking off stage or walking to make an entrance, and someone is holding a live goose in front of me and walking that goose back to essentially its dressing room, and that is truly unexpected.”
Because The Ferryman dives into the history of the Troubles, including local hunger strikers who captured international attention, Dubin felt compelled to research the time period and the battles that occurred in Northern Ireland, Ireland and England.
“Much of what had happened with the Troubles — the play takes place in 1981 — happened before I was born,” he said. “It’s incredible to learn about a story like this and learn about who the hunger strikers were, especially those 10 men who starved themselves to death in prison for the cause of Irish liberation in the north. I’m sure that I did hear about it at some point in my education growing up, but it certainly wasn’t highlighted. I felt a tremendous calling to research this as much as I could, and I still feel like I’m trying to really understand what that was like. I feel parallels with many other conflicts of colonization and government struggle and marginalized people, so I feel like I have frames of reference. But it’s an incredibly complex and heartbreaking and violent and ongoing struggle that I’ve tried to honor and do as much research about as I can.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Ferryman continues at the Jacobs Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
