Shiver of delight from Irish star’s haunting tales
WALKING WITH GHOSTS Magnificent memories ★★★★★
GABrIEL Byrne’s oneman show, a stage adaptation of his bestselling memoir Walking With Ghosts, was a late addition to the Edinburgh International Festival.
It follows debut Irish performances in Dublin and Wexford, with London and Broadway next on the slates.
What a welcome addition it is, with the Irish film star taking us on a captivating ride through his life and times.
One filled with pathos, humour, snapshots of an Ireland no longer the same as it was when he grew up – or when he left it – contrition, confessions and light, comic moments played with a vaudevillian flourish you would never associate with the crumpled, handsome, brooding star of films such as Miller’s Crossing or The Usual Suspects.
In one scene, Byrne joyously recreates the Variety Hall days in
Dublin, when he and his sister would go and see the eccentric and eclectic acts on stage. His impersonation of a famous comic of the time, with a touch of Max Miller about him, had me thinking what a great Archie rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer he would make.
The show opens with Byrne introducing the first of the ghosts that he carries around – his past younger self, ‘the Ghost Boy’, whose feet as an impoverished youngster never touched carpet, but as an adult would go on to stroll red ones.
It’s a poetic, lyrical opening. Possibly too lyrical, the monologue as purple as it is emerald. I worried that the show might fall under Kenneth Tynan’s take on Brendan Behan, that: ‘If the English hoard words like misers, the Irish spend them like drunken sailors.’
(In fact, Behan makes an early cameo here, as the young Byrne witnesses the writer drunk and sockless on a bus.)
But there’s much more dramatic meat on the bones of the tale here than a mere predilection for the descriptive. And Byrne wonderfully brings to life the events and people that shaped his life, and isn’t afraid to lay himself bare in the process.
So there is the black dog of a sexual encounter with a priest, his uselessness as a plumber’s apprentice, a hilarious recreation of his am dram days, a fascinating encounter with richard Burton, truth telling about his alcoholism; a heartbreaking account of his sister’s mental breakdown and a moving memoriam to his mammy and daddy.
It’s a magnificent performance. And I imagine Byrne’s ghosts will haunt me in the days to come.
Walking With Ghosts, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, until tomorrow, https:// www.eif.co.uk/events/walkingwith-ghosts and Apollo Theatre, London, September 6-17, https:// theapollotheatre.co.uk/tickets/ walking-with-ghosts/