Owen Roe is currently receiving some of the best reviews of his great stage career for his lead role in Florian Zeller's The Father at the Gate Theatre. Directed by Ethan McSweeny, the play tells the story of a man succumbing to the ravages of dementia with Roe's performance compared by some to his masterful turn as King Lear at the Abbey in 2013. Earlier this week the Dublin actor talked to Harry Guerin about playing patriarchs - and how he got more than he bargained for from hometown soap Fair City.
There are shades of King Lear in The Father
On the first page of the script the word 'nothing' is said seven times. That's a very important word in Lear - 'Nothing would come from nothing'. Whether there's any connection I don't know. It's one hell of a coincidence, let's put it that way. There are also shades of Lear in that there's friction between the daughter and the father - the daughter-father relationship is a casualty of his illness.
When I was playing Lear, I always put his madness down to dementia
Nowadays with audiences it's not enough to say, 'He went mad'. They're a bit more savvy and you've got to build in something that they can relate to. I thought it's very clear that Lear has dementia or has some form of breakdown in his personality that's bringing him to the point of madness or so-called madness. Having applied that to Lear a couple of years ago it was already there when I came to do The Father.
When I first read The Father I just thought, 'This is an amazing play'
I thought it was very visual, very cinematic almost, rather than theatrical. Some scenes are only about 20 seconds long - there are one or two that are just kind of flashbacks. I read it about three times in succession and I was fairly choked up by the end of it. I tried to read it coldly but I was emotionally drawn in. I was very much affected by it because of my own situation: my mother had dementia for eight years.
The response from the audience to The Father has been pretty extraordinary
It spurs people on to hang about afterwards and chat; I've never seen that before in any play I've done. It's such an emotional issue that it deals with - whether it's the father-daughter one or the dementia side of things. So it takes you a while to make your way through the bar, but that's a great thing as well. It's not like theatre is a form of therapy or anything; it's a great thing that they feel that they can talk. It creates a dialogue, like all good theatre.
For me The Father is about how fragile we all are
How we take so many things for granted, whether it's our relationships with others or it's our ambitions. We complicate our lives when, really, I think we should be searching for something a little more simple to make us happy. We should never take every lucid moment for granted because that can change very quickly. We should never take our relationships for granted, either - we should really just count to ten when we want to laugh at them or damn them.
Lear was supposed to be in his 80s; this guy is 75
I'm 57. The good thing is if I live to that at least I've another 20 years still playing these roles or more! They're meaty roles. It's not some guy going through a midlife crisis; it's someone who has lived a life and has that hindsight. So it's enjoyable. I'm not a bit vain about looking older or playing older. As long as it's convincing I don't mind!
I keep telling my wife that one day when I grow up I'll do something sensible
I don't know if that's ever going to happen! George Bernard Shaw used to say that the young know everything, the middle-aged suspect everything and the old believe everything. That probably still holds true. I buy the Oldie magazine. I don't feel old; I just love the writing in it! Okay, there are ads for stairlifts and stuff like that but I can ignore that!
At school we did Hamlet
And as result I've never had any desire to play him! It's not one of my favourite Shakespeare plays at all. I always wanted to play Iago from Othello. Hamlet, he just annoyed me! I thought he was a bit dull - maybe I just wasn't feeling any metaphysical angst in my teens! The first Shakespeare play I was in was Romeo and Juliet at the Gate, playing Tybalt.
I'd never done a soap before I played Jim in Fair City
The gas thing is I wrote two episodes when it first started! One episode in the first season and an episode in the second season. I co-wrote it with a friend of mine - we were part of the creation of it. There was a whole gang of us that used to meet every Sunday in a hotel off Kildare Street under the direction of [EastEnders creator] Tony Holland, the deviser of Fair City. Brendan Gleeson even was in on it at one stage as one of the writers! It was strange having written two episodes way, way back then to turn up nearly 30 years later playing a character.
I knew the show was popular, but not that popular
It's no problem for me to walk down Grafton Street anytime of the week. But after having done a week of Fair City there were old ladies coming up and hitting me and stuff like that, calling me names! I was like, 'I've been doing this for 35 years - one week on Fair City and suddenly they all know who you are!'
People liked Jim, even though he was a bit grumpy and a bit bolshie
I think people liked his candour and his directness. If they wanted to bring him back that'd be ok too. I'd be quite happy to do that - if they wanted to. I was glad they didn't kill him off or put him in prison, which is what usually happens when I'm on television!
The Father is at the Gate Theatre until October 22
