Eanna MacLiam is happy to be back in the Fair City, not the RTE soap with which he was associated a long time ago - he played Johnny One - but the real live one, the one at the Gate Theatre, where he's starring, along with Stephen Brennan and Jim Norton, in Conor McPherson's acclaimed new play, Port Authority.
This Gate production premiered in London's New Ambassador's Theatre on February 22nd and after a two-month run, MacLiam is still brimming over with infectious enthusiasm for the play and for McPherson's work as director and author. Enthusiasm was not very much in evidence when he began acting with the Dublin Youth Theatre and other groups in his teens; there was no hankering to be the next Cyril Cusack for this boy born 34 years ago in Crumlin and brought up in Drimnagh. "I don't like to use class labels, but I think things were more difficult then, there was more of a working-class/middleclass divide, and I just never perceived it as an occupation for someone like myself. "The only thing I actually wanted to do was join the army. That was at the back of my mind while I was doing all the youth theatre stuff, which I felt was just a hobby. But thankfully it never happened."
But it did come down to a straight choice between the two. "I remember getting the letter for the army interview - I got the day off rehearsals in Galway (for The Hostage with Druid Theatre) to come up to Dublin to go for it. And I remember just sitting there and thinking `this acting thing is kind of alright, maybe I'll give it a go, stick with it for a bit.' So, 14 years later . . ."
Fourteen years later his career has led him through film roles in the Oscar-winning My Left Foot (as Christy Brown's brother Benny), John Boorman's The General, The Commitments, The Snapper, Angela's Ashes and seven years on the small screen with Fair City. In the
Abbey/ Peacock, he's been in Juno and the Paycock, Brothers of the Brush, The Invisible Mending Company and Shadow of a Gunman, which toured Australia and New Zealand. Work for the Passion Machine has taken him to the Edinburgh Festival and the Kontakt Festival in Poland. He's worked with the Daniel Day-Lewis, Ray MacAnally, Brenda Fricker, and recently completed a short BBC video with that fey prince of pop, Morrissey. It looks like he might have made the right choice. "Absolutely, yes. It's the only thing I can do, basically, but more importantly it's the only thing I want to do. That's not to say that it isn't very frustrating at times. Sometimes there's a bit of a gap between jobs which can be a bit worrying. And then you have to be continually selling yourself to other people, competing with other actors for parts." MacLiam's work seems about evenly split between screen and theatre. "I love filming, I love being involved in that process. But theatre for me is the most challenging. It's directly connecting with the audience, particularly in a piece like Port Authority. It's a fantastic play to come back to the theatre with." He plays the youngest of three generations of Dublin men who each relate their experiences through individual monologues. He can relate to his Dublin character in the play. "In the course of those monologues, there are a lot of other characters referred to. In my case some of these are based on people Conor and I have had experience with. My character has this obsession with going to see a lot of bands in these really divey places in town. Conor used to play in a band himself, so we have this mutual familiarly with the types who used to hang around those places." Working with authors can be tricky. "I've worked on several new plays with authors over the years and it can get a bit hectic, a bit confrontational, but you just have to accept that as part of the process. But I didn't really find that here. It's one of the best - or the best - plays I've ever read and I just fell in love with it. "He's a fantastic playwright and he's able to convey the deepest feelings and the biggest issues with the most economic language. He was good in that he very much let me do things the way I felt. We didn't have these huge debates about anything, about lines being changed or anything." In his reluctance to limit its potential impact by any trite summary, I'm sure I detect more than a hint of protectiveness. "I'd say it's about loss, lost opportunities, lost love, particularly the love. We've all had experiences in that department, and my character was in love with someone he never told. In a way, it's the smallest, most irrelevant story in the world but at the same time it's a major theme. With it just being three guys there's very much a male perspective on everything, and I think some of the fairer sex might wonder why there isn't a woman in there. But I think, essentially, the sense of loss these characters feel or experience is due to their own weakness, so maybe women can identify with that. And although there are no actual women characters, the women are still very strong in it, through the experiences the characters relate." The play is unmistakably Dublin. "But having said that, we've just done eight weeks in London and while there was a strong Irish element coming along I think the non-Irish caught the essential themes of the play. Of course, it's going to be a different kind of show here. That extra character which is the audience is going to be different, they're sure to pick up on nuances a non-Dublin audience might miss." "You don't get an awful lot of chances as an actor to address the audience directly. Monologues are usually delivered within the conventions of a normal play, whereas Port is wholly based on the relationship between the actor, or at least the character, and the audience. And we each of us come downstage to the front five times during the play and have a good look at all those faces. But you can't think about it too much."
THE intensity of his engagement with the play seems to preclude any unnecessary concern about what happens next. "My plan is just to keep working. Trying to do stuff that interests me. Maybe go to London for a bit. But again it's nothing definite. The run of the play in London was an opportunity to meet a few people, to see who's out there, and to let them see me. I've got a movie I'm waiting to be released which I did last year with Robbie Coltrane, Dan Ackroyd and Brenda Blethyn. "It's called On the Nose and you could describe it as a quirky, black comedy. It was written by David Caffrey, who wrote Divorcing Jack. Robbie and I play porters in a medical college, and I suppose it's the old formula of big guy/little guy up to high jinks, and there's a bit of a caper in it too. But I can't really say too much about it without giving the essentials of the plot away, except that it's a bit bizarre." The actor's life seems perfectly tailored to MacLiam's laissez-aller approach to life. "I like the thing of not knowing exactly where you're going to end up, or who you're going to work with. I've had opportunities to work with fantastic people: Alan Parker, John Boorman, Robert Carlyle. The great thing is just rubbing shoulders with them, having a bit of craic with them." So if the army rings up and offers him a commission? "I'd have to turn it down. I'm just too old now."
Port Authority opens at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday, for a six-week run. Bookings: 01-8744045