THERE were many memorable portrayals in 1996, and an astonishing fusion of over 100 actors into one seamless ensemble performance in Silviu Purcarete's recreation of Les Danaides, by Aeschylus, in a basketball arena in Tallaght. But here I must focus on the individual actors named below, who shone so brightly.
Donal McCann returned in his acclaimed role in Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom. As it was a revival from 1995, I shall say only that any who failed to see it were deprived of greatness.
The Gate Theatre's production of Derek Mahon's new version of Racine's Phaedra contained two performances which linger in memory. Dearbhla Molloy brought a luminous quality to the title role, an interpretation which made human the stark Greek tragedy of forbidden love. It made one wish that her return visits from England were less infrequent.
In the same work, Gerard McSorley infused great feeling and authority into his key part of Theramenes, bringing the play to a mesmeric conclusion. He appeared later in the year at the Abbey, where his role in Thomas Kilroy's adaptation of Six Characters in Search of an Author, from Pirandello, was the corner-stone of an absorbing reworking of the venerable classic.
The Gate's Beckett Festival, on its way to conquer New York, had to make a few changes of actors. Rosaleen Linehan took over as Winnie in Happy Days, and warmed up, as it were, in a short outing at the Gate. She was wonderful, blending her talents as comedienne and formidable actress to dominate the role. The Big Apple, in due course, was conquered.
I thoroughly regret having unavoidably missed two Druid productions of the year, but have no difficulty in accepting the verdicts of trusted colleagues that Marie Mullen was brilliant in both.
This gifted actress played the lead in Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass Maguire, and was central to the success of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The glowing tributes paid to her, which reflect my own sense of her talent, are properly recorded here.
THIS year's Dublin Theatre Festival included among its sterling successes a new play, Kitchensink, by Paul Mercier. Its cast of four had to run the gamut from childhood to age, ard Liam Carney displayed a revelatory force of presence as rebellious youth, young husband and disillusioned father. His interpretation in depth gave the part a representative quality, the fullest possible realisation of the author's ambitious intentions.
Once in a while an actor comes along who, from the start, has that indefinable something extra in the revered cliche he or she displaces air on stage. Derbhle Crotty is such a performer, noted from her first appearances at the Abbey as a talent with a difference, an edge of danger.
In the title role of Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan, she probed deep into a troubled, jagged psyche to hypnotic effect, enveloping the audience in her aura of passion and pain. For this experience, for it was no less, she is the uncontested recipient of my Actor of the Year accolade.
