THEATRE:After roles in 'Star Wars' and 'Diana: Death of a Princess', Genevieve O'Reilly is back in Dublin to star in Conor McPherson's play 'The Weir' at the Gate, writes Arminta Wallace
THE LEINSTER CRICKET Club is the sort of place where you'd expect to hear the clink of cup against saucer, the whack of leather against ash, and maybe a spot of genteel encouragement of the "oh, well done!" or "good shot!" variety. For the past number of weeks, however, the unmistakeable sounds of an altercation involving alcohol have been drifting across the immaculately- manicured grass. It's not a brawl in the ladies' bowls clubhouse: it's the cast of Conor McPherson's play The Weir, hard at work rehearsing the Gate Theatre's summer production. "What? Hang on a minute, Jim. . ." a man's voice exclaims. And then again, more aggressively, "What?"
The voices are coming from a large, low room which has been kitted out as a pub, complete with U-shaped bar space and a few small tables and chairs. In the middle of this somewhat macho milieu, the actor Genevieve O'Reilly is a picture of grace and ease, slim as a dancer and dressed in muted grey. It's a far cry from her most recent screen incarnations - as the regal inter-galactic senator Mon Mothma in Star Wars, or, complete with uncannily realistic wig and that famously shy sidelong glance, as the eponymous heroine in Diana: Death of a Princess.
Although she was born in Dublin, O'Reilly has lived for most of her life in Australia, and this will be her first appearance on an Irish stage. A lengthy sojourn Down Under seems to have left no mark on O'Reilly's accent, which is crisp and perfectly regulated. None of those sneaky upturns at the end of sentences, then? She laughs. "You do get a bit of that over the years. My husband is Australian, and I think if I was hanging around with a group of Australian friends, you might hear it more. I used to have an Australian accent for school and an Irish accent for home."
Why did she take up a career in theatre - does she have actors in the family? "Well, I think most Irish people are creative," she says. "Whether it's music, or dance, or . . . certainly storytelling is in the blood. And it is in my family. I was the only one silly enough to carry it on to the professional level, but I would say most of my family - and my extended family - are storytellers. And really that's just what acting is."
One story with which O'Reilly has no patience at all, though, is the one about Sydney being an artistic desert. She is full of praise both for her teachers, and for the wider theatrical situation in Australia. "I did three years at a drama school called NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) and then I spent my first five years cutting my teeth as an actor on stage in Sydney," she says. "And it was great. I remember our teacher saying to us, 'Use it; enjoy it; have fun. Because you'll never work as much again in your life'."
Sydney, she insists, has a lively theatre scene. "I would always tell people to check it out when they're over there. There's some really interesting work being done by fantastic actors and creative directors. I think some brilliant work goes on in Australia, and I was lucky to be part of it. At the Sydney Theatre Company, I did a wonderful Australian play called A Man With Five Children. I also did Congreve's The Way of the World; and then the only other time when I've worked in an Irish accent was when I did Sebastian Barry's Our Lady of Sligo at Company Bin Sydney."
Three years ago, nevertheless, she and her husband moved to London. Why? "I had just always wanted to work over here - in London, I mean," she says. "And it was a time in our lives when we thought, 'Let's go - let's jump in the deep end and see where life takes us'. It was just something I had always wanted to do. Theatre has such a place in the psyche in London - and, I think, to a certain extent in Dublin as well - and it will hopefully teach me a lot."
As it happened, she got off to a flying start. "I walked off the plane and met a couple of agents and was sent to a meeting the next day with Trevor Nunn - and I got the job," she says. "And that was playing the queen in Richard IIat the Old Vic, with Kevin Spacey as Richard. I was so lucky. It was one of those things where you go, 'Oh, my God - that never happens'. I had some little people looking out for me, obviously."
Either the little people have been keeping 24-hour watch over her progress since then, or O'Reilly is a talented and versatile actress, who can turn her hand to practically anything. As far as her "career" is concerned, she's a pragmatist. "I'd just like to be able to do this for the rest of my life," she says.
"The fact that I'm still working is a bonus. It's great to have a job and then go to another one, and have another one to go to after that. It doesn't always happen; you might be waiting a few months. But I've had some interesting roles, and worked with some great people. And it has been a really interesting mix between theatre television and film."
A glance at the O'Reilly CV swiftly demolishes another often-spouted showbiz story - the one about there being no good roles for women. O'Reilly has played a brace of strong, intelligent females, from the smartly-dressed "foreign relations specialist" Caroline Hanley in the BBC drama, The State Within, to the gracious Mon Mothma in Star Wars. "I loved doing The State Within," she says. "It was a brilliant script with really complex, intelligent, fallible characters. A wonderful job. I loved that."
As for the extravagance and scale of life in blockbuster movieland, it is, she says, something that has to be experienced to be believed. In Star Warsand also in the two Matrixsequels, she was "just a tiny part of a huge, very well oiled machine. It was very slick, and it ran very smoothly. But the thing I noticed about it most as an actor is the time it allows. There's lots of time for lots of different camera shots. In an independent movie or a small production, you might get one take or three takes at the most - and it happens at such a fast pace. I'm sure there are arguments in favour of both ways of working. Independent cinema and blockbuster cinema are completely different fields, really. And they both work - when they're at their best."
What the average viewer might not be aware of, she says, is the level of detail which goes into the "look" of each Star Warscharacter. "For Mon Mothma there were two costumes, both long, bell-shaped and cream," she says. "And they were both extraordinary. One of them was pin-tucked silk with silver - actual silver - woven through it. The other was made from something called hand-worn felt. They had found it in an attic in Paris, and it dated from the late 1800s. There were all these circles on it - which was where somebody had actually worn down the fabric by making circular movements with their thumbs. It was the most astounding fabric."
At the end of the day, however, an acting job is an acting job - and Star Warswas no different. "It's all story. Whether it's a film or telly or a stage part, you have to recognise your own part in the story. So if you're in a room with the protagonist, you're very happy to sit back and just do whatever it is that's going to help them and help tell the story." Some stories are more believable than others, of course - and one of the most fantastic true stories of recent years was the death of Princess Diana.
"I was really reluctant to do Death of a Princessat first," says O'Reilly, "because she was such an icon - arguably the biggest female icon of the 20th century. So I was a bit nervous. But once I decided I was going to do it, I really just threw myself into it. And, yes, there was work to help me look like her. There was a wig, and they put tan on me, of course - because I'm a nice shade of blue and she was gorgeous and tanned and all of that. I also watched a lot of footage of her. She had such a distinctive voice, and she had a really interesting way of carrying herself. You'd recognise her from her posture alone."
What kind of reaction, if any, did she get to the film? "Most of the press was kind to me, which was nice," she says. "But I was amazed that there was actually a bigger response in America. They are very, very protective of her over there. And in Russia, believe it or not, they were mad about her. I think the English have a good sense of her life because, in a way, they lived it with her. But in America and in Russia, it's the absolute fairy tale, and one that ended tragically."
The Weiris also about storytelling - literally - as each character recounts the tale of his or her own life. "I know I've said this far too much today, and I'm boring the pants off myself," O'Reilly says. "But I love being in this play because I love how the stories take over the evenings. The stories are bigger than the characters, they're bigger than the place, and that's really interesting.
"I went to an exhibition in Kildare Street last week of paintings by Mary Lohan - seascapes which are almost three-dimensional - and I was looking at these paintings and thinking that the image is greater than the canvas. I just wanted to jump into them.
"I was reminded, and I know this is moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, of the scene in Mary Poppins. You know, the one where they jump into the paintings? I think that's really what theatre aims for - to drown yourself in another world - and I hope we achieve some sense of that. In a sense, the characters in the play are trying to do that with their own stories."
Three men, one woman. Should we brace ourselves for some terribly tragic revelations, or some kind of awful conclusion to it all? O'Reilly smiles. "I don't think so," she says. "I hope not. Well, if it's good theatre, it should have bits of everything, shouldn't it?"
Conor McPherson's The Weir, directed by Garry Hynes, with Sean McGinley, Genevieve O'Reilly, Denis Conway, David Ganly and Mark Lambert, opens at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday.