The ghosts of Gabriel’s past are haunting

ALL THE talk this week has been of Walking With Ghosts, Gabriel Byrne’s one man show, a stage production created from his memoirs currently at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre.

And with good reason too — Byrne has been delivering mesmerising performances at the venue since Saturday.

Walking With Ghosts such a compelling piece of work from a Hollywood star who is decidedly unstarry.

For over two hours Byrne holds the audience in the palm of his hand, with few frills or props, just one of our most talented stars bringing to life the people whose memory haunts him but also a spectre of Dublin and Irish life that no longer exists.

In some cases this is no bad thing as, chameleon-like, Byrne transforms from a 71-year-old to a young child, heading for his first day at school from the safety of his mother into the grip of the religious schooling that would ultimately see him travel to Wales to join the seminary.

There is light and shade in the performance where we see how life’s cruelty can erode the innocence of youth but how beautiful that innocence is.

He lovingly recreates the humour and expression of his parents, working class Dubliners who battle for their six children and save for communion suits, a father who would have preferred that his son got a trade, even when he was the toast of Hollywood and a mother whose own ambitions may have been stymied by the culture of the times. Byrne recalls the sting that poverty can give to a young child and remembers that the reason he felt called to the priesthood aged 11 was that someone showed him the seminary where priests had their own rooms while the Byrne children slept three to a bed. Though he burns with rage as he recalls the phone call he made to his abuser in later life, he doesn’t make the link between this and his subsequent alcoholism and the warnings given to him by his hero Richard Burton while they acted together. It’s 23 years since Byrne had a drink and while his passion for acting might have been the thing that saved him, this is far from a soliloquy about Hollywood. Instead, the ghosts that walk with Byrne are projections of himself, the people and experiences that formed him and made him who he is today. And we are all the richer for him sharing them with us. The run is at the Gaiety Theatre until Sunday and there are a handful of tickets left via