IT IS all systems go with Druid at the moment as rehearsals proceed apace for the forthcoming production of DruidMurphy, comprising three of Tom Murphy’s greatest plays; Famine, Whistle In The Dark, and Conversations On A Homecoming.
Among the 17 actors Druid have assembled for this landmark project is Garrett Lombard who has key roles in all three of the plays. Lombard has previously appeared with Druid in The Year of the Hiker and The Walworth Farce while his screen credits include playing Scobie in the acclaimed TV series Pure Mule.
DruidMurphy will see him take on the roles of Malachy O’Leary in Famine, Hugo Carney in Whistle In The Dark, and Tom in Conversations On A Homecoming. During lunch break on Monday afternoon, Lombard met up to talk about being part of one of this year’s major theatrical events.
A native of Gorey, Wexford, Lombard’s interest in theatre was first stirred by the town’s thriving amateur drama scene.
“There’s a strong amateur background there with the Gorey Little Theatre, and the Gorey Little Theatre Group has been putting on plays for 60 years now,” he tells me. “I got involved with them through my parents who are both members and never really looked back after that. Then when I was about 15 or 16 I thought I might give this a try professionally.”
Lombard enrolled in Trinity’s Samuel Beckett Centre and on graduating in 2000 he landed his first professional role in John Breen’s international smash hit Alone It Stands.
After that flying start, Lombard went on to accumulate a series of impressive stage credits, appearing with Francesca Annis in The Glass Menagerie and with Brian Dennehy in The Field. A favourite was Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce which travelled to the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival where it won a Fringe First and appeared at St Anne’s Warehouse, New York in 2008 to huge critical acclaim.
“I’m very fond of Walworth Farce, it was a brand new play and somewhat ‘out there’ but it went really well and was very well received,” he declares.
DruidMurphy
And so to DruidMurphy; how is Lombard finding the challenge of rehearsing for three separate roles simultaneously?
“It’s a new one for me, I’ve never done anything like it before so I’m still finding my bearings but it’s an interesting process,” he replies. “I hope the three plays are interesting enough for us not to get mixed up between them!
“You have to do a lot of work at home alone on the scripts but it’s all going well so far. I’ve never actually been in any of Tom Murphy’s plays before and I’ve been a huge fan since I was quite young so it’s a real pleasure and honour to be involved in this.”
I enquire whether doing the plays together like this heightens his sense of parallels between them, for example in the way that two of his characters, Malachy and Hugo, both have recourse to violence.
“You see parallels in the themes running throughout the work, violence being one of them, emigration as well of course and a sense of isolation,” Lombard notes. “Those themes come up again and again. With my characters, both Malachy and Hugo use violence but they are in two very different sets of circumstances and there is very different motivation behind the violence that they use.”
The character of Tom in Conversations is often seen as standing for Tom Murphy himself but Lombard points out that there are contrasts as well as similarities there.
“A lot of people make that comparison and there are definitely echoes of Tom Murphy in the character of Tom. But Tom Murphy got out of small town Ireland quite young and was able to express himself and get a lot of the frustrations he felt about Ireland out on paper.
“Tom in the play probably had the potential to do that but never escaped, and so, over the years, he became a very embittered, very hurt and lost, and quite angry because of all those things. So I think there are big differences between the two as well, maybe Tom Murphy has resolved some of those issues in himself whereas Tom the character has not.”
With the recent collapse of the Irish economy and all its attendant social woes, Lombard admits that many of the play’s themes have again become very apposite.
“Even as a youngish man in Ireland now, I’m in my mid-thirties – which Tom is in Conversations - there is a feeling of betrayal in my generation by Ireland, its institutions, its leaders,” he states. “A lot of people in my generation are now paying for the mistakes of people from an older generation and for the injustices of something they had very little to do with yet they have been left to pick up the pieces.
“There is a lot of anger and frustration about that so all those things are extremely prevalent right now and the plays will have serious echoes for today’s generation.”
On a more positive note he speaks of the enthusiasm felt by everyone in the company as for the DruidMurphy project.
“There’s a great senses of excitement,” he says. “Everyone understands how important Tom Murphy is to Irish theatre so to be asked to be involved in this project that will be bringing Tom’s work around the world is a fantastic honour and we all understand the importance of the project we’re involved in. There’s a great sense of camaraderie and teamwork as a lot of us are in all three plays.”
Lombard concludes by making highlighting the power of Famine.
“Whistle and Conversations are probably very well known around the country but I think people will be amazed by the epic nature of Famine and its ability to talk about that time,” he said. “There are very few plays that have broached that subject and I think Tom has done an astonishing job in capturing that time in Ireland so I would encourage people to see that as much as the others.”
DruidMurphy performances commence at the Town Hall at the end of May. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
