Peter Corboy told David Hennessy about A Moon For the Misbegotten at The Almeida where his co- stars are Ruth Wilson, Michael Shannon and David Threlfall.
Kilmurckridge, Co. Wexford actor Peter Corboy (32)’s screen credits include Bad Sisters, The Vanishing Triangle and a stint on Fair City.
He has done much theatre work in Ireland with companies such as Rough Magic, Malaprop and Landmark.
In one of his first appearances on the London stage, he is sharing the stage with Ruth Wilson, David Threlfall and Michael Shannon in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Almeida Theatre.
The cast is completed by Akie Kotabe and direction comes from Rebecca Frecknall.
Set on a barren farm in Connecticut, the story centres around Wilson’s Josie Hogan who, left behind by her brothers, is trapped with her volatile father Phil, played by Threlfall.
Some thing has to change.
Michael Shannon plays their landlord Jim Tyrone who, haunted by the death of his mother, drinks to numb the pain.
But when Phil feels the roof over his head is under threat, he hatches a scheme involving Jim and his daughter.
Ruth Wilson is the Golden Globe Award- winning actress known for The Affair and Luther.
Academy Award- nominated Michael Shannon is recognisable form Boardwalk Empire and The Shape of Water.
David Threlfall is perhaps best known for playing Frank Gallagher in TV’s Shameless.
Peter took time out from rehearsals to chat to the Irish World ahead of the show’s launch last week.
How have you been enjoying the process?
“Great.
“I’ve been really enjoying it.
“It’s been a lot of fun.”
What has it been like working with such a team with names like Wilson, Threlfall and Shannon?
Is it a bit daunting at first or how have you found working with them all?
“Yeah, it was a little bit daunting at first but to be honest, once you come into the room with people, everyone is so nice and lovely.
“So any nerves or anything else were kind of gone on the first day, everyone was so lovely and welcoming.
“It’s been really lovely working with them all.
“I play Ruth’s brother who runs away from home so I only really share the stage with Ruth but everyone’s been really gorgeous.”
Is it that thing of once you get down to working together there’s no egos or even ‘stars’ in the room?
“Totally, that’s kind of the magic of theatre. On day one, that’s your team and I think what’s really beautiful about working in theatre is that it’s such a collaborative process.
“Rebecca, the director, is really good at facilitating that where it’s like very much a team effort and everyone is working together.”
This play follows Long Day’s Journey into Night but has not been performed too much in London..
“Yeah, I guess Eugene O’Neill’s big play is Long Day’s Journey into Night.
“The character of Jim Tyrone returns but there are some things in the text that imply that it’s not a direct sequel.
“A Moon For the Misbegotten is certainly not as produced as some of Eugene O’Neill’s other shows.
“I didn’t know it before I came on to the process.
“It’s funny with slightly older texts, they really come alive when you speak them and really come alive when they’re read.
“I always find it really hard when you’re given a script and you’re reading it yourself in your living room.
“I’m kind of like, ‘This isn’t jumping off the page to me’.
“And then when you sit around as a group and suddenly you hear this chorus of voices bring it to life, it suddenly is just magic.
“I think it’s a really special piece and I can see why everyone was drawn to staging it.
“I think it’s special in that it might be a play that people aren’t as familiar with but it’s still such a gorgeous play.
“The lead character is Ruth Wilson’s character who plays Josie Hogan and at the start of the play, my character, her brother Mike runs away from home and she very much facilitates this and helps him escape.
“And this is the third time that she’s done this.
“She’s done this for two of her other brothers, John and Thomas, as well.
“I guess the play then focuses around the relationship between Josie, her father Phil Hogan, which is David Threlfall and then their relationship with their landlord, Jim Tyrone.
“It’s a very Irish play in a lot of ways.
“David Threlfall’s character is Irish and they’re a family who have come over from Ireland.
“Josie was born in Ireland but I was born in America.
“It’s a very funny play but it’s just so heartbreaking.
“It’s one of those plays where it’s laced with humour but then suddenly there’s this terrible gut punch.
“It’s a play of lots of different shades in that way.”
You read the synopsis and it doesn’t sound like a very funny play. Is it very dark humour like that of Marina Carr or Martin McDonagh?
“It is, yeah.
“It has that self deprecating humour that Irish people are so good at: Your ability to laugh at a situation becomes your way of coping with that situation.
“And in lots of ways, that’s kind of the killer of it as well where sometimes, rather than cracking a joke, you wish these characters could just sit down and have a conversation and bare their souls in a way that would probably be really helpful for them.
“I think the reason why it’s so heartbreaking is you see these characters trying to express themselves but they just don’t necessarily have the toolbox to express themselves in the way that they feel like they want to.
“Phil Hogan has got a real dry wit to him.
“That’s just a lot of fun to watch and David does an amazing job at it.”
How are the accents working? Is David doing an Irish accent and yourself and Ruth doing American?
“David is doing an Irish accent and he’s does a phenomenal Irish accent, I should add because Irish people are very picky about people doing their accents.
“David is doing an Irish accent and then Ruth is doing an American accent with a hint of Irish because she was born in Ireland.
“It’s 1920s America. We’re on a farm.
“We’re not totally isolated, there is a town nearby but certainly we would have grown up around Irish voices.”
Ruth has had three brothers leave so it’s just her and her father. Is it that she can’t leave or is she happy to stay?
“The character of Josie is really interesting in that way.
“I don’t know whether I would refer to Phil as abusive.
“My character Mike hates him.
“They live in a world of violence where you’re never too far from getting a slap.
“You need to have your wits about you.
“And I think what’s established very early on in the play is that my character Mike, and Thomas and John, we just weren’t cut out for that environment and we couldn’t hack it anymore whereas Josie is a lot more capable of fending off their father and in many ways.
“She’s not afraid to pick up a plank of wood and give him a slap back if he tries anything but I also think that comes from a place of her own intellect.
“Phil Hogan delights in that really acerbic, fast paced back and forth and my character, Mike, is just not able for it.
“And Josie is able to meet him where he’s at in terms of the back and forth and always has a response.
“She’s in this weird situation where she has this reputation in the town as sleeping with loads of different men and I say that she doesn’t care for her reputation or her virtue and she is very happy to perpetuate those rumours about herself.
“I think she’s in a weird situation where she feels responsible for her father but she also doesn’t feel like she can leave.
“She feels responsible for the farm but she feels like she wants to find herself in the world.
“She very much lives in a man’s world and she has the physical strength and the intellectual strength to keep up with that.
“I guess she has looked out for her brothers and she is looking out for her father but at the same time, I feel like she is kind of wrestling with the desire to have more from life.
“I think she sees the possibility for this in this character of Jim, their landlord, who is kind of an on again, off again figure in their life and who comes very much with his own kind of worldly problems.
“He’s an alcoholic and comes from another not entirely functional family.
“The play is about this one night that they spend together where they kind of try and find a safe port, I suppose, in within each other.”
You say you’re not sure you would call Phil an abuser per se but he is a user, he doesn’t mind using Josie to trap Jim..
“He’s definitely a schemer and he is constantly laying plots.
“He is never not looking for the next opportunity to make money and to trick people and to try and come out the best of any situation.
“He doesn’t really mind using the people around him in order to achieve those ends and he will use his family gladly in order to achieve those ends so he is abusive and coercive and manipulative in that way.
“When he’s scheming against other people in the village- If he’s selling them a sick cow or a pig or something like that- Josie is very much in on those schemes whereas my character Mike, and my brothers, we’re good Irish Catholics and I certainly don’t approve of it and I feel like there’s a lot of shame that I have around the dealings of my father in the village.
“On paper all of the things that Phil does are manipulative.
“He’s a very sly character but at the same time, he’s a little bit of a lovable rogue and you can see that all of these things that he does, as heinous as they might be or as morally questionable as they might be, he is doing it for his family or in the hope of trying to have some kind of a better life.
“There’s definitely a lot of moral grey area there, for sure.
“They have a good relationship with Jim and they have this deal with Jim where Jim will sell the farm that they live on to them.
“When Phil comes back from the pub one night and tells this story that Jim has agreed to sell the farm to their neighbour, Harder.
“They come up with this scheme to trick Jim into selling the farm to them.
“Josie will get him really drunk and woo him and Phil then will come back at the end of the night and catch them in bed together and they will use this to blackmail Jim.
“I think Josie feels like she’s betrayed by Jim, she has no problem tricking him.
“She says to her father Phil at one point, ‘If Jim goes back on his word, then there’s no trick, no matter how bad, that I wouldn’t join you in acting upon him’.”
Are all the characters haunted by something?
“I think they’re all definitely haunted in different ways.
“Josie kind of has the responsibility of this whole family on her shoulders and she also has this reputation that she wears as a badge of honour.
“Whether or not there is truth behind that reputation, that’s also still to be seen within the course of the play.
“I think Jim is absolutely haunted by his relationship with his family, his relationship with alcohol, the death of his mother is something that plagues him constantly.
“It’s a funny thing with Phil.
“I suppose as a family they came to America looking for this better life and it’s not necessarily a dream that was realised for them.
“He has this farm that doesn’t make a lot of money and he has this house that is kind of falling down.
“Really what Phil is trying to do is make ends meet at the end of the day.
“I think there is a lot of shame that he probably feels for that but I also think that there is something in that that he relishes, this sense of him against the world.”
Olivier Award- winning Rebecca Frecknall is your director. She, of course, directed Paul Mescal in his lauded A Streetcar Named Desire which was also at the Almeida so you are in good hands..
“Yeah, I think so.
“I think what Rebecca really excels at is just letting the characters sing.
“She’s definitely got a real gift for that.”
Did you happen to catch The Brightening Air actually, it shares themes with this play does it not?
“Yeah.
“I find that with The Brightening Air as well, the family is so central to Irish culture but as a family member, you can really never get away from the things that are passed down to you from the generations before.
“I think The Brightening Air dealt with that really beautifully: Family members trying to make life together work but at the same time, trying to find themselves as individuals and trying to find what do they want in life apart from their family?
“I think that really resonates with A Moon For The Misbegotten as well with Josie’s character being like, ‘Listen, I am the thing really that’s holding this family together but also I need a life and I deserve a life. I need love in my life and I deserve love’.
“But it’s how we go about searching for those things and whether or not we have the tools to even begin that search is kind of the challenge that these characters face.”
Did you always know you wanted to act?
“There was the Kilmuckridge Drama Festival which was part of the amateur Irish drama circuit.
“That was my first exposure to theatre.
“I think for a lot of people, theatre can feel like quite an exclusive space at times and my first introduction to theatre was seeing my neighbours getting up on the stage and doing a show together, so theatre was not this kind of alien thing for me.
“It felt like a very present thing and then when I was in secondary school, I started going to youth theatre and it was fairly soon after that I was like, ‘Yeah, this is definitely what I want to do for the rest of my life’.”
What’s next for you? Is there anything you’re moving on to after this?
“Yes, I’m doing a show with Landmark called Reunion by Mark O’ Rowe so I’ll go back to Ireland for rehearsals for that and then we’ll bring it to the Kiln for a month and then to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.
“That comes hot on the tails of the end of this so it’s quite exciting to go from one show into another show.
“That show is another big old Irish family drama with loads of trauma and secrets coming out.
“It will be exciting to get stuck into that one.”
A Moon For The Misbegotten runs at The Almedia Theatre until 16 August.
For more information and to book, click here.
