A friend of Eileen Colgan's reached for Maisie Madigan in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock to find words adequate to describe the late actor who has died at 80. She was, he said, "fit to commensurate in any position in life it would please God to call her," a "powerful Irishwoman who was incredibly cosmopolitan".
Another said that “not many people realise that Eileen went to boarding school in France”. It was what gave her “that innate sophistication which went with her warmth and intuitiveness. She had extraordinary good taste, in the home, cooking etc.” Yet “there was nothing pretentious about her”.
She was, another said, “a very raw, intuitive actress of incredible strength and capacity for emotion in a role” who had a terrific sense of humour.
A colleague recalled “an awful play” they both took part in at the Peacock. “We shared very rude jokes about the author, and Eileen said that if hell existed it would be a never-ending run of this play.” On the first night the (now deceased) author presented them with a box of chocolates which, when opened, were covered in blue mould.
“Wouldn’t ya know,” Eileen said.
Surprised
What surprised many people was how devout she was. Some only discovered at her funeral that she was a lay Carmelite, though one did recall her reading her prayer book in the car before heading for the set of
Fair City
at RTÉ. But "she was not a holy Mary at all, not a holy Joe. She was incredibly open."
"Earthiness" was a word which cropped up frequently in describing her, as well as "very giving", "warm hearted," "her own woman". And "sensuality", probably why she was such a success as Molly Bloom. "Though modest about her acting, generally she was satisfied with that performance and said something like 'I think I nailed that one', about it," said a colleague. Her Molly Bloom won plaudits in Ireland, Britain, the US and Japan.
Yet she didn't have it easy. When her husband Alan Simpson died in 1980 she was 46 and with four teenage children, "two boys, two girls, the eldest 13. She was devoted to her family and her eight grandchildren."
She had a beautiful singing voice. It was why Alan Simpson cast her in The Scattering , a Pike Theatre production staged at the Olympia all those years ago. As a young woman, she trained with Shelah Richards in Dublin before joining a fit-up company run by actor John Molloy which toured the country and during which she almost died of flu on Achill island.
Later, she was selling tickets at the Pike in Dublin when, it is said, she asked co-founder Alan Simpson for his ticket. It was their first meeting. They married in 1963 and went to London where they worked at the Royal Court and the National in Scotland before returning to Dublin in 1970, with four small children, when he was appointed artistic director at the Abbey theatre.
She joined the Abbey Players and was there until 1988, appearing in such as The Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, The Hostage, Ulysses in Nighttown, Richard's Cork Leg and Talbot's Box , of which the latter two shows also enjoyed successful London seasons. Her major roles were as Molly Bloom in Ulysses in Nighttown (1971) and Mrs Geoghegan in The Whiteheaded Boy (1974). She was also invited to play Molly Bloom at the 1982 James Joyce Centenary celebrations in Toyko.
'Moll'
Over recent years she played in John B Keane's
Moll, The Chastitute
and
Letters to a TD
all over Ireland. One of her last stage appearances was in 2007, and in French, with daughter Clara, at Lyon's Théâtre National Populaire in Beckett's
Come and Go
and
Not I
.
But she would be best known to Irish audiences as Mynagh in RTÉ's Glenroe and as Esther in Fair City . She will also be remembered for her TV roles as Mrs Mulhall in Strumpet City and won a Jacob's Award for her role in Hatchet. Her films included My Left Foot, Fools of Fortune, Angela's Ashes, Widow's Peak, and Tara Road.
Summing her up, a friend said she was “as enduring as a great Irish oak, long-standing, deep-rooted, sustaining, encompassing, sheltering, productive, generous and pleasure-giving. Of course she might prefer comparison with the willow, due to its associations with intuition, eloquence, and creativity.”
She is survived by her four children, Katy, Cathal, Ben and Clara, and eight grandchildren.
