Sinéad Cusack told David Hennessy about starring in People, Places and Things with Denise Gough and why acting is not as glamourous as it appears.
Sinéad Cusack has been lauded with awards and nominations over a long career.
She received the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Award for her tour de force performance as the bedridden, dying, angry Mai in Sebastian Barry’s Our Lady of Sligo at the National Theatre in 1998.
She garnered critical acclaim for her turns in the West End and on Broadway in that piece as well as Much Ado About Nothing and Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, the last two earning Tony Award nominations.
She has also been nominated for Best Actress at the Olivier Awards five times.
More recently she also took an IFTA for her role in The Sea and an Irish Times Theatre Award for her work in Our Few and Evil Days.
You might say she’s done well but then she did once have ambitions of being a saint.
Of course she is also part of the famous Cusack acting dynasty.
Daughter of Maureen Cusack and Cyril Cusack, both actors, there was clearly something in the blood with Sinéad and sisters Sorcha, Niamh and half sister Catherine Cusack all following them into the profession.
It hasn’t skipped a generation either with Sinéad’s son Max with her husband Jeremy Irons now also a leading man while nephew Calam Lynch and niece Megan Cusack have found success on Bridgerton and Call the Midwife respectively.
Sinéad can now be seen on the London stage in People, Places which sees Denise Gough reprise her star making and Olivier Award- winning role at the Trafalgar Theatre.
In our recent review, The Irish World said it was one of the best pieces of theatre we have seen and that Gough should be making room for more awards.
Directed by Jeremy Herrin, the play by Duncan MacMillan tells the story of Emma, an actress who finds herself checking into a rehab centre for drugs and alcohol.
In her supporting role, Sinéad plays the roles of the centre doctor, therapist Lydia and finally Emma’s unforgiving mother.
Sinéad told The Irish World: “It’s a terrific piece. I saw it 10 years ago in its first iteration at the National and I thought it was an amazing play then.
“And every night I listen to it and I think it is an extraordinary piece of writing and beautifully directed and performed, and the design.
“I mean, everything about it really, I think, is just terrific.”
Do you remember what it was that stuck with you from first seeing it in 2016?
“I think it was Denise who I remember because it’s such a powerful performance and even more so now, 10 years later because, I don’t know, she’s older, wiser or smarter. Or better.
“But it’s her performance I remember.
“I didn’t take in the play quite as comprehensively as I do now obviously, having worked on it in rehearsal and now playing it.
“I’ve come to the understanding that it’s an extraordinarily well written, insightful, human and funny play. How does he do that?
“Duncan Macmillan touches on really dark issues of addiction and rock bottom addiction, and yet he treats it with humanity and with humour and makes it theatrical as well.
“Well, Jeremy Herrin did a lot of that as well because it’s a terrific production and it’s a brilliant cast, wonderful cast that we’ve got.
“It’s been a pleasure. It’s tough because it’s very high octane. It’s very energetic. I play three different women, although they’re all the same woman so that’s been challenging: Three different personalities and very quick changes. I’ve got 20 second changes so yeah, it’s tiring but it’s a very rewarding play to do.”
As different characters you encounter Emma at different stages of her recovery..
“That’s what is so interesting about the play: The fact that I have three different versions to play. One is a doctor: Highly intelligent, slightly eccentric, rather English and then a much more empathetic, open, accessible, gentle therapist, and then a mother who has been beaten down or has, by her own actions, caused herself and her daughter immense pain and she’s not a pleasant character. She’s tough.
“But some of these characters that I’ve played over the years, the more complicated and dark they are ery often they are the most interesting to play.”
There certainly is the humour alongside the darkness.
You have funny exchanges with Emma as both the doctor and the therapist.
Yet there are also touching moments such as when Emma finds out about the passing of another character.
That brings home the reality that these people are all trying to save Emma’s life. That’s what addiction does, it takes lives…
“Yeah, absolutely it does and he’s very clear that that was her trajectory downwards into despair and death, very possibly, which is what has happened to a lot of addicts.
“So there is that redemptive quality to the play as well, that you can be helped. There is a solution. You can cope with life on life’s terms with support and help, and that’s great.
“And then the other thing that people don’t talk about quite so much because the addiction issue is so powerful in the play, but it is also about the acting profession, about how precarious that is and how it can be so tough on the psyche: Constant rejection, insecurity, no possibility of planning anything in your life. Those are things that are rarely talked about.
“People think our profession is a glamorous one. Well, it’s not. If you’re very, very lucky you manage to make a living, but you have to be very, very lucky to do that.
“I just feel for our younger generation because I’m ancient now and I’ve had a very lucky career. I’ve worked pretty consistently all my life so I’ve been very lucky, but I watch young actors coming into this profession and I think it’s huge courage required to deal with what it throws at you.
“It’s not a pretty profession ours. It’s cruel and it’s insecure and it’s dangerous, and there’s not a lot to recommend, except, as she says in the play, sometimes you get to say great lines in a great play or a great movie or whatever, and that’s what we feel about this play, that it’s a privilege to play these people, because they are people that are giving some value and understanding and insight to people, and that feels great, and it’s rare.
“So for those reasons, for all those reasons, I wanted to do the play, and also to work with Denise again because we’d worked at the Gate in Dublin doing Connor McPherson’s play The Birds.
“It was Ciarán Hinds, me and Denise and so that relationship is a strong one.
“I love working with her on stage, so that’s been good.
“The extraordinary thing about working with Denise is she’s absolutely without filter on stage, so you’re getting the truth all the time.
“She’s rarely the same from night to night, it varies but there’s always such truth and such integrity in her playing of this character that you don’t for a second doubt her or see Denise Gough but you just see the character.
“She’s wonderful to play with.”
We see at the end when Emma goes home to her parents just how hard it has been on the family, the impact of addiction on those around the addict…
“Lovely, I’m glad you got that.
“I think during the rehearsal period I found all sorts of different ways of playing mum and I suspect that some of them I tried to soften her and make her more likeable and Jeremy Herrin, our director, said, ‘No, no. Her grief at the loss of her son and then a daughter who is constantly, constantly betraying a trust, and really damaging that family, that’s sort of calcified the mother, she has become hardened so that every promise that the girl makes, that her daughter makes, is difficult to believe, because she’s been let down so often’.
“So yeah, she’s a tough one, but it’s a great part to play.”
You can hear an audible gasp from the audience at that exchange, can’t you?
“Well, there’s a few gasps.
“What’s wonderful about the play is you’re balancing on a knife edge all the time of trusting in the character and being betrayed sometimes in that trust.”
Isn’t it a credit to Denise’s performance in that you do engage so well with the character of Emma who has not been truthful?
“That’s right, but she’s hugely engaging.
“That’s a very good word, hugely engaging as a human being because she demonstrates so many colours from despair to humour and she is deeply, deeply damaged, and the humanity of the writing allows you to empathise and have understanding of that damage.
“I think that’s great writing and great acting.”
One thing that Emma’s repeated lies blur is the actual fate of her brother Mark who she says died but keeps changing that story to it becoming a different cause of death, not dying at all or that she never had a brother..
“That is a complex area because she does lie so often that we had to decide as a company when we were rehearsing, ‘What actually happened to Mark?’
“And we suspect that actually what happened was something that came absolutely from leftfield, like a brain aneurysm, something like that.
“But the truth is he died, and that has damaged her and the family unit irreparably.”
We see Emma rehearsing who she will come clean to her parents in therapy but of course it does not go so well when she is at home…
“Of course, that’s what’s so clever about the writing: That you actually have her saying almost the same words to the therapist that she later says to the mother, and the two very, very different reactions from the therapist and the mother. One is human and empathic and generous and listening and accessible, and the mother who is completely closed and can’t allow herself any humanity at all in her dealings with our daughter hardly.”
Have you seen how the play has resonated with addicts?
“Oh, yeah. Denise told us stories of addicts, or recovering alcoholics or drug addicts finding that the play in many ways reflected their own lives and their own journeys, and they’re incredibly moved by it.
“Here we meet them outside the theatre, people with tears in their eyes saying it’s an extraordinary night in the theatre because it’s so much about the truth of a horrendous situation, which addiction is, when you’re in that distorted reality and where you’ve retreated from the world because you can’t face what the world is doing or has done to you, and you retreat into a far worse hell actually.
“I think it resonates very, very strongly with everyone who sees it.
“I think it is extremely rewarding to be a part of this particular production because, as I say, the level of talent and expertise all around us in terms of direction, in terms of writing, in terms of acting, is rare, but also because you feel you’re doing some good.
“That sounds very pompous but you do feel you’re giving something of value with this play.
“And I love the fact that you never know when you walk on that stage. You can feel within 10 minutes what sort of audience you’ve got.
“It’s always packed this play but the audiences change from night to night, and you know within five minutes whether they’re going to be receptive, whether they’re going to be amused, whether they’re going to get all the literary references, whether they’re going to be slightly shocked.
“It’s never the same. You do get a different sense every night.
“It’s different every night.”
Sinéad did research addiction for her preparation.
“We hope that Emma is going to have a fulfilling and rewarding life and she’s not going to revert but addiction is a long term daily commitment as the doctor character says, and it requires strength of purpose and strength of mind.
“She’s very vulnerable and all the slings and arrows of fortune hit her very hard.
“There are some people like that who can’t take the slings and arrows and have to have something to dull the pain.
“That’s what’s great about the play, that it makes that very clear, that there is trauma at the base of her addiction.
“99% of addicts probably have trauma or even inherited trauma.
“I’m sure that’s true in many families.”
You speak of some of the pitfalls of acting there but I bet you wouldn’t do anything else or change anything..
“I don’t know,” she says with a wry smile.
“I wanted to be a nun. I wanted to be a saint actually, that was when I was about 15.
“And then I wanted to write.
“I wanted to be a writer but, yeah, it sucked me in.
“And of course, I do. I love it although it fills me with terror going on stage. I think, ‘What am I doing?’
“I always think, ‘They’re going to find me out now this time’.”
You almost can’t come from a family like yours and not be an actor, can you?
“We keep thinking that we’ll have doctors, lawyers, writers, poets, but no, they’re all bloody actors, aren’t they?
“Well, not all of them but quite a few.”
Do you have a special love for stage work?
“I don’t ever think like that. I tend to think in character terms so it’s always the characters that appeal.
“If I’m sent a script, what I’m interested in is the journey of a character.
“If the character hasn’t got a journey, I’m not interested.
“I have three characters in this, so I had three to explore but if I had read the script for a movie or for television, I’d be equally interested, but the response we get from an audience, there’s nothing like it.
“There’s nothing like it, the camera can never compare with what we get given by an audience.
“The Abbey was where I began with Donal McCann, Stephen Rea, the good old days. And then I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“I was passionately in love with Shakespeare and I was very lucky.
“I stayed in the company for about eight years doing a great number of Shakespeare’s women so it was a fantastic time in my life.
“I love the theatre.”
Just as Denise has won awards for this play, you have been honoured with awards as well..
“Sebastian Barry’s Our Lady of Sligo is up there amongst my top favourites, a lot of the Shakespeares.
“I’ve had great times in my career.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky to play some of these women.
“I just was blessed really to be able to play those parts and it took me worldwide.
“We went on huge world tours with the RSC all over the world, all over Europe, America.
“I’ve been very lucky.”
People, Places and Things is at Traflagar Theatre until 10 August.
For tickets and more information, click here.
