Fifteen years ago, Kate O'Toole appeared at the Lyric in Belfast, but she doesn't remember much about it. She was on tour with Field Day, playing Stephen Rea's other half - twice - in Thomas Kilroy's Double Cross. The production was something of a tour de force for Rea, who gave a virtuoso performance as both the wartime collaborator, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), and the Dublin journalist, Brendan Bracken, who became a close aide to Churchill.
O'Toole played Margaret Joyce and Bracken's girlfriend Popsie, as well as all the other female roles. Hardly surprisingly, her recall of the week's run at the Lyric was as just another gig on the tour.
"It was my first job in Ireland", she recalls. "Can you imagine anything more like a baptism of fire for a young actress - playing the two female leads and all the other female characters . . . and sharing the stage with Stephen Rea? Scary!"
Now, Kate O'Toole is back at the Lyric in more leisurely fashion, cast in the Irish premiere of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, directed by Jackie Doyle for Prime Cut Productions. Widely acknowledged as the outstanding piece amongst Albee's later work, it is a kaleidoscopic view of one woman's life, which, in 1994, won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Play, as well as a handful of other prestigious awards.
"I am astonished that this is its Irish premiere", says O'Toole, "because it is just so good. I could think of many Dublin actresses who would kill to play these parts. I'm enjoying working with a company of women, none of whom I have met before, and we are all relishing these marvellous roles. I get a real buzz from working on a text which is so precise. Every comma, every full stop, every pause is there for a reason. I really like that."
She is joined on stage by Helen Ryan, who appeared in another Kilroy play for Field Day - The Madame Macadam Travelling Theatre - and Ginevra Benedetti, who recently graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting and won the Gate Theatre Award 2000 for her role as Margot in Under the Stars at Theatre Space @ The Mint. O'Toole last saw the play in the West End, with Maggie Smith and her friend Sarah Kestelman, whose role she is now occupying.
"It is a formidable play, very funny, very poignant, yet not at all sentimental. It packs a powerful punch and fixes an unflinching gaze. Although it is set in the wealthy society set of the east coast of America, where Albee grew up, it has great resonance for Ireland - or, indeed, for anywhere in the world. It talks about the human condition, about womanhood, life and death."
In her rangy looks and quick mannerisms, O'Toole is very much the product of her famous parents. Her high cheekbones and clear blue eyes recall the striking facial features of both her mother, the Welsh actress Sian Phillips, and her father Peter O'Toole, who visited her over Christmas in her Co Galway home. But while she may resemble them both, it is her father's ancestry which has imprinted itself upon her.
"I don't feel Welsh at all," she declares, with a swift apology to the land of her mother. "I have never been drawn to Wales and only lived there until I was about three. We moved briefly to London and then came to Connemara. I have been there just about all my life and although I may travel away to work, I am always pulled back there. It's where my father's people came from. It's home."
She gives an impression of energy and restlessness and admits to being constantly on the move, always with a raft of "projects" - as well as her dog OJ (so called "because he gets away with murder !") - demanding her attention. In the past couple of years, she has completed the restoration of an old cottage near Clifden and has been filming a television documentary about the last Galway Hooker in the Claddagh fleet. She has also packed in a handful of high-profile films, including Pat O'Connor's Dancing at Lughnasa, Pat Murphy's much praised Nora, and the screen adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel, Possession, which goes on general release later in the year. And then there was The Barbaric Comedies . . .
"Ah yes, the wicked Barbaric Comedies. I played a spinster, who had never had sex in her life. I ended up naked and violated. When we played the Abbey, everybody in the business totally adored it. The reaction in Dublin was such a contrast to Edinburgh, where we got hate mail, dog poo in the post, walk-outs and noisy demonstrations in the theatre. "The really depressing thing was that a lot of the protesters were young people, representing some kind of Catholic youth defence organisation. Needless to say, none of them had actually seen the show. But I loved everything about it. Doing good work gives you great freedom and, after The Barbaric Comedies, anything goes."
IN Three Tall Women, O'Toole plays a middle-aged woman, known only as B. The younger woman, C, is played by Benedetti and the older one, A, by Ryan. The play is described in Changing Stages, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright's recently published view of 20th-century British theatre, as "aching with a desire for love and reconciliation".
O'Toole voices real satisfaction, not only with the fantastic use of language, first registered in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but also with his sureness of touch and characterisation and optimistic tone.
"The three women are not physically tall, as the title suggests, "she ventures. "Their stature is determined by their refusal to be victims, even when they have every reason to be. They are brave, courageous, funny and will not be beaten by life's obstacles. It's inspiring. Yes, inspiring."
Three Tall Women previews at the Lyric on Thursday and runs until February 10th. To book phone 048 90 381081.
