Sex and the acting tumbleweed
John O’Callaghan libidinous Anatol Arthur Schnitzler play resonates
John O’Callaghan has landed a job many an actor would envy.
“ I get to fall in love with seven beautiful women . . . every night,” he says with the broadest of smiles.
O’Callaghan has just arrived from New York after a successful run in Howie the Rookie at the Irish Arts Center to take on the title role in Arthur Schnitzler’s The Affairs of Anatol.
Anatol is a young Viennese philanderer and, in a series of quick sketches, the play charts his varied sexual adventures. The magnificent seven women are Kathryn Winslow ( This is Wonderland, Where the Truth Lies), Stacie Mistysyn ( De Grassi: The Next Generation) Tara Samuel ( Sue Thomas: F. B. Eye), Marie Beath Badian, Kim Kuhteubl, Lindsay McMahon and Darlene Spencer. Sue Miner directs the cast of nine, with James Murray playing Anatol’s friend Max. The Dublin- born, Hollywoodbased O’Callaghan is no stranger to Toronto, where he appeared in Anna Livia’s Bloomsday series from 1997 to 2003 as well as starring in By the Bog of Cats and playing the title role in Godzilla for Crow’s Theatre.
“ People kept asking, ‘ Why does Godzilla have an Irish accent?’ ” he recalls. “ It was a good laugh.” He also stripped to the buff in The Full Monty
at the New Yorker Theatre: “ There were busloads of grannies screaming their heads off and some shows felt like a soccer match. It was really funny.”
O’Callaghan, who laughingly admits to a “ Hollywood age” of 29, went to university in Belfast then came to Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University for a year before returning to Belfast to complete his degree in computer science.
His father has a taxi business in Dublin and it’s a sporting family — one of his two brothers is a professional soccer player. But while O’Callaghan enjoyed sport and was good at it, he’d wanted to be an actor from high school onward. “ It ( acting) just didn’t seem like a possibility. I’m from a working-class area of Dublin and it was a big deal to go to university. I was the only one of my family to go to university.” He got involved in theatre while in Belfast and toured around Ireland with a show improvised from the Maria Edgeworth novel Castle Rackrent.
Meanwhile, his sister had applied for U. S. green cards for the whole family in a lottery. “ We didn’t really want them or need them but these things arrived in the mail one day, and we’d been accepted.” So O’Callaghan took a twoyear training course at the New Theater Conservatory in Boston ( where one of his brothers lives) then returned to Canada to work in Toronto. “I didn’t think I was ready for New York or Los Angeles and it is easier to build up a good resumé here.”
Nowadays, he lives in an old apartment building at Hollywood and Vine, once the haunt of people such as Orson Welles and Clark Gable in their prestardom days, and divides his time between all three cities: “ I am bit of a tumbleweed of an actor and I do travel around,” he remarks. An example is the Conor McPherson one- man show Rum & Vodka. O’Callaghan launched the show at the Toronto Fringe where it was a huge hit, then took it to New York and LA. And now the tumbleweed with the roguish grin is back in Toronto along with dog Charlie, a schnauzer/ chihuahua mix, whom he found abandoned on an L. A. highway late last year.
“ I think he was a Christmas gift that got ditched; it is totally impractical to keep him,” says O’Callaghan. “ But he goes everywhere with me, to all the radio and TV interviews. He also helps in rehearsals where he relaxes things.” And now Charlie’s current assignment is The Affairs of Anatol. Despite the fact that the play was written in 1893, Anatol is somewhat like Carrie in Sex in the City,
says O’Callaghan. Both “ sit around talking to friends about their relationships.”
Schnitzler, with his unblinking focus on sex and lust, resonated in our own times. Other works of his have inspired such recent movies as Eyes Wide Shut and The Blue Room One of the things that attracted O’Callaghan to Schnitzler is that his writing rings true to life, O’Callaghan says. “ All the relationships I’ve had are in this play, all the doubts and the insecurites, whether someone is cheating on us or not.” What about his own love life?
“ I am single right now, but I am ready,” he says with a smile. “ This life of going from city to city is not so good for the old romance.” Just the facts What: The Affairs of Anatol Where: Artword Theatre, 75 Portland St. When: Previews from tonight, opens Sat., runs until Oct.9. Tickets: $16-$31 @ www.totix.ca