Dressed in black flared 1970s-style trousers and sporting a screamingly loud patterned shirt with a collar wide enough to take flight in, actor and director Maeliosa Stafford is sitting down to a well-earned plate of sandwiches. As he munches away in the boardroom of the Gaiety Theatre, he is halfway through a long and arduous technical rehearsal for a rerun of Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West.
The play is part of the Leenane Trilogy of plays, directed by Garry Hynes, that have been hailed as both modern classics and "shallow and superficial", depending on your point of view. In the work's original production, Stafford brought an unhinged, darkly comic and latently violent interpretation to the role. With a distinguished career as actor and director now firmly established, both here and in Australia, where he now lives, I wonder why has he has decided to return to the role of Coleman Connor at this time. Stafford's broad grin looks slightly sinister, beaming from between coal-black Elvis sideburns, grown for the part.
"Part of me said: 'Summer in Dublin - fantastic,' " he says. "But I also have selfish reasons - to come back to Ireland for a few months to further the cause of my theatre company in Sydney, O'Punksky's. I wanted to make contacts here that might be interested in investing in cultural events in Australia."
Stafford is a man who seems happiest when he has a few projects going at the same time. Renowned for his indefatigable energy and obsessive passion for theatre, he has just finished directing a successful Irish-language version of Vincent Woods's At the Black Pig's Dyke for the Galway Arts Festival. Even when he was artistic director of Galway's Druid Theatre Company, he was known to direct and act in the same shows. Often after a day's extended rehearsal, he would return to the theatre on his own, pace the stage, imagining and playing out the parts in his own mind, while the actors went home to their beds. His is an obsession that is complete.
"I got used to theatre at a very early age, because my Mum and Dad, Seβn and Mβire Stafford, were involved in the Taibhdhearc from the time I was born, if not before. In fact, they actually met in a play. I think my first appearance on stage was in the womb. I started young." On leaving the womb he adds his parents had "great foresight" in naming him - "I was born with a full head of hair", he jokes, explaining that one translation of his name is bald (Mael) Christ (Iosa).
That early exposure continued throughout Stafford's early years, acting in the Taibhdhearc, taking roles in school plays at the Jesuit College in Galway. His stint studying for a B.Comm at UCG was somewhat out of character, a diversion from his path that was quickly rectified by active participation in the college drama society. When the time finally came to knuckle down and retake failed exams for his B.Comm, he chose instead to accept an offer from Hynes, throwing in his lot with the fledgling Druid. He was 21 and unaware that his career choice would make him now, at 44, not only one of the finest actors of his generation, but also one of Ireland's most influential, innovative directors.
"Druid was in one way a drama school," he says. "We were learning on the ground as we worked. Particularly in the first five years, we learned our craft on the job." With other talented performers, like Marie Mullen, Seβn McGinley, Mick Lally and Ray McBride, Stafford helped forge a distinctive Druid style under the directorship of Hynes. While he finds that style hard to define, Stafford suggests it may have something to do with "a sense of comic timing coming from knowing people well, the way they think and work". But he notes, "it was only when we went to Edinburgh with a devised play about the life of Granuaile, Island Protected by a Bridge of Glass, that people began to sit up and take notice. We got four Fringe Firsts there."
Stafford went to Australia, where he married a native and settled. Later, after Hynes left for the Abbey, Stafford returned to Galway to take over the helm at Druid. That early devised work with Hynes, Island Protected by a Bridge of Glass, would exert a deep influence on him.
As artistic director at Druid, his work, particularly in collaboration with writer Vincent Woods, made a distinctive mark, effectively constituting a new Druid style. "What always interested me, theatrically, was a sort of style of presentation. When I think of my favourite early Druid shows, I have to say that Island Protected By a Bridge of Glass is the one, for its complete and utter theatricality. It was total theatre, it was live music, brilliant storytelling, it was comedy and tragedy, a mix of fantastic ideas. I think, in the back of my mind, that was the most inspirational piece of work I was involved in."
That idea of "total theatre" flowed through Stafford's productions of Woods's At the Black Pig's Dyke (both nine years ago, and last month's Irish language version), considered by many to be one of the most important recent Irish plays. Brendan O'Regan's music, Ray McBride's choreography and Monica Frawley's set complemented Woods' innovative script and Stafford's insightful direction to tell a story in a way that had not been seen on the Irish stage before.
The Woods/Stafford collaboration in the 1990s can only be compared with the Garry Hynes/Tom Murphy collaboration in the 1980s for the fruit that grew from the meeting of essentially theatrical minds. It is with regret that Stafford notes that Vincent Woods has been somewhat neglected as a writer since Stafford finished his tenure at Druid and returned to Australia in the early 1990s. "I was surprised that the National Theatre didn't pick up what was one of our new national extraordinary talents. I regret it. I feel he was left by the wayside. How can he be forgotten so quickly? I hope that can be rectified soon. He's an amazing talent."
Such a criticism of the National Theatre, rather than any of its specific directors, provokes the question of whether Stafford would be interested in the Abbey artistic director's job himself, a post some consider to be something of a poisoned chalice?
"If the offer came in the morning . . . It's not that I'm saying no, but I'd have to think about it at great length. I wouldn't rule anything out. I don't know how well I'd work in a huge bureaucratic set-up. All too often, the bigger the institution, the bigger the bureaucracy and the less freedom the creative artist really has. But I wouldn't rule it out."
In the meantime, however, Stafford is committed to Australia, his wife and family in Sydney, his drama teaching at the University of Western Sydney, and O'Punksky's Theatre Company, where he has been instrumental in bringing some of the best of Irish contemporary dramatic writing to Sydney audiences.
Yet despite his residence on the other side of the world, Stafford remains keenly interested in developments in the theatre here, a fact reflected in his commitment to come home at least once a year to act or direct. While he considers that "writing-wise, Irish theatre is in a pretty healthy state", he does cite the need for better training for Irish actors as a particular concern. As for his old company, Druid, he is as interested as ever in its progress.
"I'd imagine that Druid is at a crossroads, but then again, it's been at many crossroads before. You do get the sense that it's changing. Maybe it's on the point of turning again. I haven't had that conversation with anyone connected with Druid to know more, but I have noticed that there's been a development grant for the refurbishment of the theatre; that can only be a good thing."
Stafford is referring to a recent Department of the Arts grant for Druid to develop its Chapel Lane theatre space in Galway, a space that has been used less and less in recent years, with the arrival of the bigger Town Hall Theatre in the town.
For Stafford, the Town Hall Theatre has been something of "a double-edged sword". While he agrees that it is an excellent facility, he does note that its larger capacity has resulted in shorter and shorter Druid runs. This has taken away from the sense in Galway that Druid is ever-present, that at the end of each extended run in the smaller Chapel Lane space, another Druid production was ready to go almost immediately.
"I think there's less shows than I'd personally like to see happening in Chapel Lane," says Stafford, while saying the development grant for the Chapel Lane space will probably change all that. Galwegians would probably agree, hoping to see Druid mount full original productions for the Galway Arts Festival rather than concentrate on large and long out-of-town sell-out runs of revived shows elsewhere, such as the present production.
But box offices speak for themselves, above the head of any critic. As Stafford finishes his lunch and gets ready to head back to rehearsals, flares flapping, I can't help think that he has a roaring success of a show to look forward to in the coming weeks. Full houses, rapturous applause - the kind of reception that we've grown used to for McDonagh/Hynes collaborations. "This may be my last run at the character of Coleman Connor," says Stafford. "Soon I'll be too old to play him." Catch him in the flesh, while you can.
The Lonesome West is at the Gaiety until September 29th and opens at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway on October 2nd