INTERVIEW: Una Clancy pulls triple duty in O’Casey plays
Photo: Robert Langdon Lloyd and Una Clancy star in Irish Rep’s 2019 production of The Shadow of a Gunman, part of the Sean O’Casey Season at the off-Broadway theater. Photo courtesyy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
The Irish Repertory Theatre is celebrating the artistic merits of playwright Sean O’Casey this season by staging three of his most well-known works: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars, his so-called Dublin Trilogy.
Una Clancy, an accomplished stage actor, appears in each of the plays, portraying wildly different women who are brought together by O’Casey’s shared poetry. In The Shadow of a Gunman, which has been running since January, she plays Mrs. Henderson in a dramedy set amidst the Irish War of Independence in 1920. In Juno, she portrays Mrs. Tancred in the family drama, which is arguably O’Casey’s most popular work. Finally, starting April 20, Clancy will play Mrs. Gogan in The Plough and the Stars, another family drama set against the backdrop of a Dublin set ablaze by the Easter Rising of 1916.
For Clancy, the process began at the end of December when auditions were held.
“I guess at the end of December, auditions were held, and I read for the roles that I’m cast in,” the actor said in a recent phone interview. “Signed on and we began very early in the new year, Jan. 2, starting off with our rehearsals for Shadow of a Gunman. … But as soon as we were done tech-ing Shadow, we were starting to get Juno on its feet. We started rehearsals for Juno as soon as Shadow was up, and then when Juno went up, we started immediately on Plough.”
In other words, Clancy has been busy for the entirety of 2019. She has had to learn three parts and work with three directors — Charlotte Moore for Plough, Ciarán O’Reilly for Gunman and Neil Pepe for Juno.
“It was very beautifully designed and I think thoughtfully worked out,” she said. “Actually it was a nice contrast between the plays and the roles in terms of the weight of them. … So, for example, my role in the second play, in Juno, is a very intense role; however, in terms of the amount of stage time, it was much lighter for me. So that kind of consideration has been part of the process of casting, so everybody had lighter and heavier [roles] in terms of preparation I think. I think we all feel well considered from that point of view.”
O’Reilly, Moore and Pepe were all new directors for Clancy, and she enjoyed their distinctiveness. Of course, O’Reilly and Moore are also the co-founders of the Irish Rep, a respected off-Broadway institution that has been producing Irish theater for a number of years.
“That has been and continues to be a wonderful thing for me personally to work with new directors, and then for each of them to have such a distinctive, different interpretation and approach has been phenomenal,” Clancy said. “It’s been interesting to have Neil in the middle show. … It was wonderful to have his frame of reference be a very different angle in a way, to look at these plays in a different point of view. He brought us into a frame of reference very close to the American experience, especially the experience of war and loss. I think having grown up as an Irish woman, I was 8 years of age when the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland. And 1916 and 1922 didn’t feel terribly far away, so I think I was steeped in all of my own Irish [history] … It’s a universal question really, the question of conflict and war and loss. It was great to go from the one with Ciarán, which was wonderful, and then into Neil and now working with Charlotte. They each have a very different way of working.”
Clancy was familiar with the work of O’Casey, who is one of the greatest Irish playwrights of the 20th century. His plays have been mainstays at the theaters in Dublin and regional venues across Ireland. Juno receives the most exposure, and Clancy has been experiencing productions of that classic her entire life.
“O’Casey was very revered, both for the tragedy and the comedy,” she said. “Little phrases and sayings came into Irish usage, and characters that were part of the cultural vocabulary because of O’Casey. He’s very much like [William] Shakespeare in that regard. He coined so many phrases and brought the working class into the fore. He would have been very revered in Ireland and continues to be. School children still study his text. The context has changed. It’s a little hard to relate to — from some points of view in a very, very new Ireland, especially in this last decade — and yet he’s given voice to these characters and their points of view that were very much ahead of their time, I think mostly by the women’s voice and the women’s place in his plays. Without being in the context of our time with the whole questioning and reexamination of a woman’s place, hearing his plays now, he was really intimating a future and a very strong place for women in the Irish cultural landscape.”
Clancy has enjoyed the feedback she has received from audience members, consisting of Irish, Irish-Americans and people of other cultural backgrounds. She is particularly interested in hearing from those who do not know too much about Ireland’s unique 20th century history.
“One of my favorite things to do is to go out after a show with friends who really do not have a footing in the Irish context, of history or culture, real New York theatergoers,” Clancy said. “I really love to hear from them what they got because I’m so interested to hear what comes through these plays as universal and timeless and human, applicable to all contexts and not particularly Irish. I’ve had really wonderful exchanges with friends, and I’m thrilled that they’re taking away a very broad and deep meaning from the messages and also coming away and saying, ‘I had no idea about the history of the conflict in Ireland.'”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Sean O’Casey Season continues through May 25 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
