FROM THE ARCHIVES:Mary Maher spoke to Siobhán MacKenna, widely regarded as the leading actress of her day, as part of a number of interviews with actresses during the Theatre Festival in 1967. – JOE JOYCE
SIOBHAN MacKENNA, reigning over the Irish theatre from an expanse of sitting room in Rathgar, russet-haired, open-faced, freckled as a tinker: “There was a magic in the theatre, an excitement about the curtain rising, when I was a young actress in Dublin . . . it isn’t there anymore . . .”
Her voice is rustling and her mind restless, drifting with the cigarette smoke when she speaks. She has told her own story a hundred times: acting as a child in Galway, at boarding school in Monaghan, honours in three languages at University College, Galway; the influence of her father, Professor Owen MacKenna; the early days in the Abbey, the phenomenal success of “St. Joan.” European and American tours, an international reputation on stage, screen and television.
She lives quietly in Dublin. “I can’t go two steps, really, without being stopped. We are inclined to be a table-hopping nation, but that’s the way we are, there’s nothing to be done about it,” and she laughs richly. But Siobhán has never regretted staying in Ireland, and she complained only that the tax situation was disheartening.
More than once she has created controversies with her own brand of assertive nationalism. She claims to “hate politics, but love my country,” and expressed herself strongly on the taint of provincialism in Dublin’s theatrical world. “It always comes up during the Festival, in a few days you’ll read in the paper that this play or that one is being considered for America. That should be secondary. We should judge our plays by our own standards.”
Conversely, she does not believe that Dubliners are impressed with foreign stars. “I’ve been embarrassed at the size of the house a few times when big names were here. That’s one thing this city’s rather good about, though – ‘Juno’ would have sold out without Peter O’Toole. In fact, ‘Juno’ would pack houses tomorrow if it opened with an unknown Irish cast, but that’s because O’Casey is such a great writer, with literary and box-office quality. Friel has it, too. I think Molloy has it.”
She talked of Synge, and how well he understood the Aran people. “My husband and I always fight about this, about ‘The Playboy.’ Denis doesn’t think Synge got them right at all, but I know the west, and I know these people – there’s a great Rabelaisian quality in them, an earthiness. There’s a wonderful innocence, and underneath it a tremendous knowledge . . . I love Pegeen Mike, she’s so vulnerable, but she has such a grasp of the basic, animal spirit . . .”
“I’ve been at Michael Molloy to write a play for Grainne Ni Mhaille, theres [sic] a great play somewhere there. I don’t think any Irish woman’s role has ever really summed up Irishwomen. ”
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