by Terry Roethlein
Photos by Giulio Graziani

These are the grim surroundings where Cusack's character, Mai O'Hara, an alcoholic cancer victim as old as the century, lives out her final days. Floating in and out of a morphine haze, she feverishly relives the past, alternately regretting her mistakes then laughing at them, raging against her own depleted life and against an era of Irish history, marked by disappointment and defeat.

Mai's character is based on Barry's grandmother and is emblematic of the forgotten Irish middle class--the high-living Catholic bourgeoisie that prospered under British rule but eventually succumbed to the Sinn Fein revolution and the austere rule of Prime Minister Eamon deValera, who ascended in 1932 and didn't step down until 1958.

In previews, the petite, blue-eyed Cusack, 52, inhabits the character wholly, blazing with anger and passion for life--one moment spitting out venomous curses at her husband and drinking partner, Jack (Jarlath Conroy) and the next, delicately wrapping her tongue around one of Barry's many mellifluous speeches.

The role is the latest achievement in an impressive career that includes many British television appearances throughout the 1970s and numerous acclaimed roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, of which she was a regular member from 1979 to 1984. Notable Broadway performances include Much Ado About Nothing, and Cyrano de Bergerac with Derek Jacobi, both in '94 and in films such as Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996), Steven Gyllenhaal's Waterland (1992) and Andrew Birkin's The Cement Garden (1993). The award winning Our Lady of Sligo was originally produced in London in 1998 and is directed by Max Stafford Clark.

What did it take to prepare for the role of Mai O'Hara?

I did a lot actually. Because of the size of it, because it's so gagantuan in learning terms, I broke a rule of my professional life and started learning lines before I went into rehearsal. Why I frown on that usually is because I always believe a good production of a play arises and evolves, organically out of the work between the actors and the director. Any predisposition or preconception about that process is actually damaging to the rehearsal process. That's always been my contention...up until this point. I knew I could not work rehearsals in a state of continual hysteric panic. And that's the state I would have been in if I only had four weeks to prepare for that role. So I started learning four months before and I learnt it like the Catechism.

You know what the Catechism is? We learned it as Catholics at school.

I used to teach Catechism, but just for a year. There you go! (Laughs) Gosh! So I learnt it like the Cathechism. Now when we went into rehearsal, great swathes of these were cut or they were changed, but the basic learning was a huge comfort to me and a foundation on which I was able to build. I then spent a great deal of time researching Mai, the character herself. I went to Sligo. I went to Galway. I found her house, her university records. I met people who knew her. I talked to people about her. I soaked myself in the accent. I made endless recordings of Galway women of a certain age. I researched cancer. I researched alcoholism. It was a lot of work but it was rewarding.

Alcoholism shows up as a theme in lots of Irish literature and theatre. Does it reflect reality in your experience? Does it make for good art?

This is a difficult one and to generalize about it is incredibly dangerous. The Irish tradition is an oral tradition. Our language was passed down by means of storytelling-different from English literature, which was passed down by the written word. Ours was the spoken word. Side by side with that spoken word was the "round the fire" or the "round the pub" element. People communally gathered, caroused and told stories. That's the tradition we come from. I would hate to trivialize the Irish artistic tradition by saying we produced great writing because we had great drinkers. And also, Sebastian does n't drink! (Laughs) So I'm just trying to put it into a bit of a historical context. Ours was a tradition of storytelling and maybe that included more drinking than the hermit-like existence the writers had experienced.

The show received excellent reviews in England and then was brought here. Did American audiences react differently to it?

No, we made no concessions or changes in order to accommodate an American ear because I think that would be fiddling wrongfully with the play. We have gone from Saturday night, when every nuance of the play was caught. every laugh was there and they understood every historical reference. Then other nights there will be a hushed and, you hope, respectful silence. But it's usually almost a cathedral-like silence. Then they'll give you a standing ovation at the end and...it's like, "Christ, they didn't understand any of that." So we have gone from one extreme to the other.

This play is the sixth in a series of plays about Ireland by Barry. How does his work fit in to what else is going on in Irish theatre?

It's an amazing canon of work. I would be loathe to say "trends," or to categorize him in any way, because he has a unique voice, as does Brian Friel, Tom Murphy or Martin McDonagh. These young writers, my God! It seems to me that if there's any trend, it's that Ireland somehow per capita, for whatever reason, produces an extraordinary variety of writing talent. And why we're blessed in that way I have no idea. Maybe it's because of that great oral tradition we were talking about. I suppose, historically, the storytelling side of our history has been almost nurtured by visionaries within the government, such as Padraig Pearse, the leader who signed the proclamation [of the Irish Republic] in 1916 who was a writer and a poet. And more recently we had an arts minister named Michael D. Higgins who was a poet and because of that I think there is a huge respect for the arts in Ireland.

Regarding the impact of the Eamon deValera administration on the Catholic middle class--you were born in Dalkey, Dublin and educated in Ireland. Did deValera affect you at all?

Oh yes, yes. As a woman, I always felt myself to be the weaker vessel because that was the attitude that was encouraged. My parents were both actors, as were my grandparents, so I had a more liberal and open view of things than what transpired a lot of Irish households. I suppose it was incul cated in me--the notion that a woman's place was in the hearth. I have to fight that--I'm still riddled with guilt.

Would that be one of the reasons why you left Ireland?

I left for so many reasons. I basically left because I was thrown out of the Abbey Theatre. They said I couldn't be heard past the first three rows from the stage. I've spent my entire professional life disproving that. The bigger the theatre, the happier I am. Yeah, I was thrown out! So the opportunities were not vast for me there. And also, you know, every child of 21 wants to fly the coop, wants to carve her own name. My Dad (actor Cyril Cusack) was a very big name in Ireland, widely respected and loved. I think I just wanted to get out from under.

So you went to England in 1969 and did a lot of Shakespeare.

Huge amounts of Shakespeare. There's hardly one of those women I haven't played. I did it the wrong way around. I did television and films in my '20s, so I had no proper training, really. And then in my thirties I said God, I've got to put this right. I've got to get skill, because all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress. That was my ambition. So I then had to learn my craft, aged 30, and I thought the best place to learn was the Royal Shakespeare Companywith ceaseless rounds of verse-speaking, movement, and sonnet classes.

You have homes in London and Skibbereen, in western County Cork. How is it when you go back to Ireland? How much has changed for women ?

It's a very, very different country indeed. The hold the Church had on Ireland was a very significant one and it has lessened. It's been undermined by various scandals in the Church but also because people are educating their children towards a broader understanding of right from wrong. So that rigidly Catholic ethic that we had to adhere to is less now.

You've done a lot of theatre and films recently. Is there a direction you want to go in, perhaps one more than the other?

I've been told all my life that a woman's acting career becomes seriously jeopardized by the time she gets to 35. At 45, you're pretty much over the hill. I started having a wonderful time around 40. I've never sought stardom. I have sought excellence, because I love that. It gives me great pleasure if I can do something to the best of my ability. I think that's the question. Some times I surprise myself by doing something even better than I thought I could. But I do constantly seek the challenge. So it doesn't really matter to me what medium. But stage is my favorite, by far, because I can't see myself. I hate seeing myself. I find it extremely painful and avoid it at all costs.

I've read that with actresses such as Meryl Streep-that as they get older there are less and less good roles. You 're 52 and still seem to get good roles.

Maybe it's because Meryl, Glenn [Close] and the like had such stellar film success--whereas I've always had a very broad-based career. I don't think Meryl could ever have done television, once she started making those movies. People would have thought she'd taken a retrograde step. Whereas I never had that problem. I went for the roles and then, quite a lot, dottered about. I think it works in your later years. However, we all dry up and...l want to touch wood. [Knocks on table] I spend all my time here in America touching wood, crossing my fingers, praying. It's just ridiculous.

What was it like working with your husband, Jeremy Irons, on Waterland, in which you play a husband and wife tortured by a childhood abortion?

That was incredibly difficult, because those two people were poised on the edge of an abyss, into which they both fell. There are huge advantages with working with someone as close as your husband or your children or your father. You have a vocabulary which makes your characters incredibly rich, so you don't have to build up painstakingly, like I had to do with Mai. The body of language is there and you instinctively understand the other person's rhythms - its all there. The downside is that you know each other intimately and you can press buttons that are damaging, or you can predict too easily how that person is going to react. You can patronize that person by expecting them to behave as they do in their marriage or by not treating them professionally. So it's fraught with difficulty, but I think the advantages well outweigh the disadvantages.

you're been married for 22 years. How did you two meet?

First when I met him he was doing a play called Godspell. He was playing John The Baptist/Judas Iscariot and I was doing a play called London Insurance and we shared a stage door, so I used to see him. In the West End there were two theatres with the same stage door . He was then introduced to me in a pub the way actors get together after a show. He was introduced to me by a mutual friend and he called me Siobhan and I hit him. That was a good beginning! And then subsequently, a mutual friend of ours had the same birthday as him and they gave a little dinner party at a restaurant and I was one of her guests. I flirted outrageously with him and it worked.

What's next? You have two films, Passion of Mind, with Demi Moore, was directed by Alain Berliner, best known for Ma Vie En Rose and My Mother Frank directed by Mark Lamprell.

I made My Mother Frank in Australia last year, which was a quirky and gorgeous little script and a wonderful part for a woman of 52 - multifaceted and funny. It's about a woman who is still grieving the death of her husband, who died several years before. Her children are irritated with her, so they encourage her to do something and she decides to go to the same university as her son. That's where the comic impulse lies. The sad element is when she discovers midway through - She has to overcome huge obstacles. Sam Neill plays my professor and he's brilliant to work with. I had a whale of a time. I loved Sydney and the film and I just hope it gets distribution. It's coming out in Australia just after I finish Our Lady of Sligo. But I'm not allowing myself to dwell on the future for the moment. I am too taken up. I'll have to eventually though; I've got to grow up.