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Interview at Martin’s Tavern
Conor McPherson:
Quite the head turner
Writer, director and ‘Exorcist’ fan can’t get ghosts off his mind
by Peter Marks
T
he other visitors can have their museums and their memorials. What Conor McPherson finds captivating in
Washington is a steep stone con- veyance. Yes, those 97 steps in George- town made famous by “The Exor- cist” make up the tourist destina- tion at the top of McPherson’s must-do list. On his previous trip to the city, the Irish playwright and film director, who lives with his wife in a seaside cottage out- side Dublin, took in the killer stair- case — prized mostly these days for its aerobic workout possibil- ities — and indulged his horror- movie fixation. “It really speaks to my makeup,”
McPherson is saying as he digs into his stew at Martin’s Tavern, the popular pub on Wisconsin Av- enue. And, of course, if you know anything about the 38-year-old writer, the irresistible quality of that cinematic staircase for him is completely comprehensible. This is a guy who can’t get ghosts out of his head. Well, actually, that’s not exactly
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“A monumental performance-for-the-ages!”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
STARRING BROADWAY’S
Takács String Quartet
APRIL 17–25, 2010
Joyce Yang, piano
Friday, April 16 at 8pm
The Music Center at Strathmore
HAYDN
Quartet in D Major, Op. 71, No. 2
BEETHOVEN Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3
SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44
WALTER HAWKINS
WPAS MEN AND WOMEN OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR
MARIETTA SIMPSON
GOSPEL ACROSS AMERICA
Gospel singers Walter Hawkins, Richard Smallwood, and Lecresia Campbell, along with WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel Choir and the National Symphony Orchestra, perform classic and popular gospel repertoire.
SACRED SOUNDS:
APRIL 24, 8 P.M. CONCERT HALL TICKETS FROM $20
MARIETTA SIMPSON
APRIL 21, 7:30 P.M. TERRACE THEATER ALL SEATS $32
MAVIS STAPLES
APRIL 23, TERRACE THEATER
SOLD OUT
Plus free performances April 17-25 on the Millennium Stage!
Tickets at the Box Office or charge by phone (202) 467-4600
Order online at kennedy-center.org/gospel TTY (202) 416-8524 Groups (202) 416-8400
Joyful Sounds: Gospel Across America is
made possible through the generosity of the Charles E. Smith Family Foundation.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“The Takács have the ability to make you believe that there’s no other possible way the music should go… that comes only with the greatest performers.” ~ Gramophone
Mitsuko
Uchida, piano
Wednesday, April 21 at 8pm The Music Center at Strathmore
MOZART
Sonata in A minor, K.310
SCHUMANN Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6
“An elegant, deeply musical interpreter who strikes an inspired balance of head and heart in everything she plays.”
~ Chicago Tribune
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APRIL 13 –MAY 2
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The National Theatre
1321 PENNSYLVANIA AVE., NW
HARVEY FIERSTEIN
AS TEVYE
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true. He’s quite successfully lifted the spectral world out of his imagi- nation in a series of plays that have placed him at the front of a pack of wordsmiths who over the past decade have restored Ireland to the top rank of dramatic hotbeds. Three of his works — “The Weir” (1999), “Shining City” (2006) and “The Seafarer” (2007) — have made it to Broadway, a startling achievement for a serious young playwright in the age of “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys.” The special McPherson touch is an ability to endow characters with the gift of lyrical confession and his stories with audience- pleasing whiffs of the supernatu- ral. Ghosts always seem to be hov- ering in the wings of his plays, and death is a lively preoccupation. Raised a Roman Catholic but no longer religious, he says that his fascination with mortality and the afterlife intensified at University College Dublin, where he became absorbed in dramatics and philos- ophy. He writes to indulge his curi- osity about questions that can’t be answered. “I’m asking, why are we here, and what’s beyond?” he says. “We know so little of the why, what the universe is, what infinity is. The veil around us is very fragile.” With his warm gaze and placid
features, the redheaded McPher- son has the aura of an unflappable English professor, the kind who would keep long office hours and a sympathetic ear for the troubles of
on washingtonpost.com
VIDEO ON THE WEB
Staff artist Patterson Clark created the sketch of
Conor McPherson using the Brushes app on the iPhone. See a time-lapse video of the sketch’s development at
washingtonpost.com/style.
his students. No trace of the more tightly wound fellow he once ap- parently was can be detected as he picks at the pieces of chicken and sips a non-alcoholic beer. (He’s previously disclosed that in his 20s, he had a serious drinking problem, for which he eventually received treatment; “Shining City,” in fact, revolves around a thera- pist-patient relationship.) He’s in town on this occasion in his less-celebrated role as a movie director: His modestly budgeted indie film “The Eclipse,” which he wrote with Billy Roche, is trying to find an audience. Not to be con- fused with the similarly titled, forthcoming third installment of the blockbuster “Twilight” fran- chise, the movie — which opened Friday — proved to be a hit entry last spring at the Tribeca Film Fes- tival. Set at, of all things, a literary festival in the Irish village of Cobh, near Cork, it’s a feature of offbeat pace, starring Ciaran Hinds as a taciturn shop teacher who’s re- cently lost his wife, and Aidan Quinn as a visiting blowhard of an American author. Perhaps unsur- prisingly, the critical reception has
been mixed. But McPherson is buoyed by the interest America has shown in the film — “The first place that it has gotten distribution is in the U.S.,” he says — and by the idea that he’s allowed to follow his artistic bliss, even in the wake of some middling past results. (His 2003 screen com- edy, “The Actors” with Michael Caine, was a financial bust.) “It’s not that there are limos pulling up outside my house,” he says jokingly of the odd corner of renown he occupies, one that mer- cifully allows him to live his life free of celebrity encumbrance. He can even attend his plays unrecog- nized. For him, a lifelong love of movies turned filmmaking into a logical side step, though he says he has no ambition to apply a talent for conjuring things that go bump in the night to more marketable kinds of Hollywood entertain- ment. No, at this point, he’d rather
forge his less predictable path. Shot in Cobh in the fall of 2008 on a budget of about 2million euros ($2.6 million), “The Eclipse” is told mostly from the perspective of Hinds’s Michael, after he’s recruit- ed to chauffeur one of the festival’s star attractions (Iben Hjejle), a comely writer in the midst of breaking off an affair with Quinn’s philandering Nicholas. In distill- ing the story for the camera, the playwright says he was entirely in his element. “When I’m looking through that
lens, I’m looking into that world, and it’s real. It’s such a meditative and transporting thing. The more complete the film, the more real the world became.” Is it possible that the project felt so authentic to him because he’d added his own dash of the unreal? He explains that it was his idea to inject into Roche’s original story an unsettling dimension, the visi- tations on Michael of a series of apparitions. These occur only spo- radically in the movie, and materi- alize in ways that are truly terrify- ing. When you mention to Mc- Pherson that you feel the adrenaline coursing through your body, he brightens considerably. The remark is music to an “Exor- cist” lover’s ears.
marksp@washpost.com
KLMNO
SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 2010
OPENS FRIDAY!
FRIDAY 8PM!
© 2009, JOAN MARCUS
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