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This adaptation of Sean O’Casey’s play about a Dublin family trying to get by might best be described as one for completists, in terms of Alfred Hitchock’s body of work. Theatrical, both in its staging, which is largely confined to a single room, and in terms of its performance, which is broad by today’s standards, it was nevertheless well received at the time.

Sara Allgood (who was the first to play Juno on the stage) is the best of the performers, generating a decent amount of emotion as the story hits its increasing number of melodramatic beats, including a crucial monologue. She plays Juno Boyle, a Dublin matriarch who has her hands full trying to make ends meet while coping with her workshy husband Jack (Edward Chapman), the “paycock/peacock” of the title. The couple have a son Johnny (John Laurie, who would go on to find fame late in life as.

It’s understandable that most movie and TV fans remember Maggie Smith for her dynamic work in the “Harry Potter” films and “Downton Abbey.” More recent and far more widely seen in their time, they are worthy examples of her outstanding work.

But unknown to even some of the most knowledgeable cinephiles is most of her screen work before the 1980s beyond her two Oscar wins (Best Actress for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Supporting Actress for “California Suite”). Her passing at 89 represents a chance to look back at not only roles that conveyed her later brilliance but also, in some cases, present a broader range than what became the standard — though always with nuance and distinctiveness — Maggie Smith role of later years.

When reviewing her film career until at least 2008, it’s critical to remember that she was first and foremost a stage actor. She joined Laurence Olivier...

British stage and screen actress Maggie Smith, the “Downton Abbey” and “Harry Potter” star who numbers two Oscars, three Emmys and countless stage awards to her credit, died Friday in London. She was 89.

“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said in a statement. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.”

In her late 70s, Smith drew an entirely new legion of fans thanks to her starring role in...

Mubi Swoops For Andrea Arnold’s ‘Bird’

Mubi has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Bird, the Andrea Arnold feature that is getting its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Written and directed by Arnold, the pic stars Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski (Passages, Great Freedom), and newcomers Nykiya Adams and Jason Buda. The plot follows a 12-year-old girl, Bailey, who lives with her dad and brother in a squat in north Kent in southern England. As her dad has little time for his kids, Bailey seeks attention and adventure elsewhere. BBC Studios-owned House Productions made the film, which was shot in the UK around the Kent area. Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell and Lee Groombridge are the producers. Financiers include BBC Film, the BFI through National Lottery funding), Pinky Promise, FirstGen Content and Access Entertainment. Cornerstone is handling international sales and distribution, striking the deal with Mubi.

Druid Theatre Company’s presentation of Sean O’Casey’s century-old Dublin Trilogy begins with a knocking. At the start of this six-hour, tripartite production dubbed DruidO’Casey, a man raps loudly on a wall, presaging the moments across the plays in which characters bang and hammer on each other’s doors, often barging in without receiving a response. And if that’s just life in Dublin’s tenements, it’s also the pounding fist of history itself demanding an entrance: In the aftermath of seismic events in Ireland’s journey toward independence, O’Casey boldly forced audiences to consider the impact of the just-concluded revolution on the everyday citizens, especially women, who become collateral damage.

At the NYU Skirball Center, the three plays of the Dublin Trilogy can be experienced individually or, on DruidO’Casey’s marathon days, all at once. The trilogy, ordered here by the historical events that...

Agnes O’Casey as Dolly, Kathy Bates as Eileen Dunne and Maggie Smith as Lily Fox sign up for the ‘All Stars Talent Show’ in The Miracle Club. Photo credit: Jonathan Hession. © themiracleclubcopyright 2023. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates play longtime friends in ’60s Ballygar, Ireland hoping to win a church talent contest for a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, in Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s dramedy The Miracle Club. Actually there are three friends, with the third being a young neighbor, played by Agnes O’Casey. The women have differing reason for wanting to make the pilgrimage – two hope for a miracle and one wants a trip of lifetime. There is a fourth woman is on the trip, Chrissie (Laura Linney), the long-absent daughter of a recently deceased friend, who has returned after four decades in America for the funeral of her estranged mother.

The Miracle Club...

The new Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen will make its world premiere this fall as part of the 2023-24 season of New York’s Public Theater Off Broadway, the Public announced today.

With music and lyrics by Keys and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, Hell’s Kitchen will begin previews at the Public on October 24, with an opening night of November 19. The engagement will run through December 10.

The cast includes Shoshana Bean, Brandon Victor Dixon, Chad Carstarphen, Reid Clarke, Chloe Davis, Nico DeJesus, among others. Michael Greif directs, with choreography by Camille A. Brown.

The musical is described as a coming-of-age story set in a cramped apartment in the neighborhood of the title near Times Square, where 17-year-old Ali is desperate to get her piece of the New York dream. Ali’s mother is just as determined to protect her daughter from the same mistakes she made. When Ali...

Harry Belafonte, the actor, producer, singer and activist who made calypso music a national phenomenon with “Day-o” (The Banana Boat Song) and used his considerable stardom to draw attention to Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights issues and injustices around the world, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte, recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2014, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home on the Upper West Side with his wife, Pamela, by his side, longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine told The Hollywood Reporter.

A master at blending pop, jazz and traditional West Indian rhythms, the Caribbean-American Belafonte released more than 30 albums during his career and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2000.

Calypso, which featured “Day-o” and another hit, “Jamaica Farewell,” topped the Billboard pop album list for an incredible 31 weeks in 1956 and is credited as...

John Wayne gets a bit of a bad rap as an actor. Yes, he mostly made star vehicles after his breakthrough performance in John Wayne's "Stagecoach," but he was willing to challenge himself (and his audience) by playing unlikable protagonists in Howard Hawks' "Red River" and Ford's "The Searchers." He had an acute understanding of film acting, and, according to Ron Howard, could make minor adjustments on the fly that would turn an otherwise ordinary scene into a classic Wayne moment.

But did anyone want to see John Wayne play King Lear on Broadway? Not particularly. At least, not because they thought it would be good.

Wayne was not a classically trained actor. He found his way to motion pictures because Tom Mix owed a favor to legendary USC football coach Howard Jones. When Wayne was forced to quit the team, Mix and Ford brought the young man into their extended company.

Has Jeffrey Wright worked nonstop since he fell in love with acting in college in the late 1980s? It seems like it. From indie hits to blockbusters to weighty TV series to Broadway, the actor, who can next be seen in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” will justifiably be honored with Variety’s Legend and Groundbreaker award at the Newport Beach Film Festival, which this year runs from Oct. 21-28.

The actor’s early career includes such projects as Lorraine Hans-berry’s “Les Blancs” and Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” at the Arena Theater; “The Playboy of the West Indies” and “Search and Destroy” at Yale Rep; but it was 1993’s “Angels in America: Perestroika” and “Millennium Approaches” that really supercharged his career. He won Tony and Drama Desk awards for “Perestroika.”

Wright started out at Amherst College as a political science major. He grew up in Washington,...

George Ferencz, a longtime mainstay of the Off Broadway scene who directed premieres and revivals of plays by Sam Shepard, Aishah Rahman and Amiri Baraka, died Sept. 14 following a long illness. He was 74.

Showbiz & Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2021 – Photo Gallery

His death was announced today by the three-time Emmy-winning costumer designer Sally Lesser, his wife of 35 years and collaborator on more than 65 theater productions.

Among the other then-new playwrights directed by Ferencz in significant stagings were Jean-Claude van Itallie, Mac Wellman and Yasmine Rana. Ferencz also directed established works by playwrights including Eugene O’Neill, Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Sean O’Casey and Agatha Christie.

“We would regularly run into his colleagues and former students on the street,” actor Jenne Vath, who worked in numerous Ferencz productions, said in a statement. “They would invariably say that George changed their life. George was a great spirit and a rock star...

Exclusive: Poldark and The Hobbit trilogy star Aidan Turner has signed with ICM Partners for representation in all areas.

Turner is best known for starring as the title character in BBC’s hit series Poldark, a role which has earned him multiple awards, including the Radio Times Audience Award at the 2016 BAFTA TV Awards.

The Irish actor will next be seen in Amazon’s UK series Leonardo playing the titular Leonardo da Vinci as well as Terrence Malick’s upcoming film The Way Of The Wind. Other credits include Jim Sheridans’s Secret Scripture and Love Is Blind, opposite Chloe Sevigny.

His stage credits include Martin McDonagh’s Lieutenant Of Inishmore, Romeo And Juliet, Vincent Woods’ A Cry From Heaven and Sean O’Casey’s The Plough And The Stars.

Turner continues to be represented by Richard Cook at Lisa Richards, Inc. and managed by Larry Taube at Principal Entertainment.

If a contemporary Hollywood screenwriter pitched the plot of Sean O'Casey's classic 1923 drama, The Shadow of a Gunman to a movie producer 'A struggling poet gets in over his head when he allows his neighbors to believe he's an Ira gunman in order to impress an attractive young woman.' it might get sold as a wacky romantic comedy.

Rod Taylor dead at 84: Actor best known for 'The Time Machine' and 'The Birds' Rod Taylor, best remembered for the early 1960s movies The Time Machine and The Birds, and for his supporting role as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's international hit Inglourious Basterds, has died. Taylor suffered a heart attack at his Los Angeles home earlier this morning (January 8, 2015). Born on January 11, 1930, in Sydney, he would have turned 85 on Sunday. Based on H.G. Wells' classic 1895 sci-fi novel, The Time Machine stars Rod Taylor as a H. George Wells, an inventor who comes up with an intricate chair that allows him to travel across time. (In the novel, the Victorian protagonist is referred to simply as the "Time Traveller.") After experiencing World War I and World War II, Wells decides to fast forward to the distant future, ultimately arriving at a place where humankind has been split...

Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy

Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.

Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union,...

Interview Andrew Blair 28 Nov 2013 - 05:50

The mighty Colm Meaney talks to us about Alan Partridge, a little bit of Con Air, and The Statham...

Please note: there's a spoiler for near the end of Alpha Papa in this interview. It's marked.

Sharing star billing with Steve Coogan on the critically acclaimed Alan Partridge movie (read our review here), Colm Meaney's varied career has seen him contribute to some prime fillets of geekbait. Second only to Michael Dorn in terms of appearances in Star Trek episodes, he's also played a henchman in Under Siege, sworn entertainingly at John Cusack in Con Air, and reduced Bruce Willis to tears as the tragic British pilot in Die Hard 2. This on top of roles in The Commitments, Last Of The Mohicans, Layer Cake, and The Damned United (he's also due to play a truculent Northern football manager in the forthcoming Pele...

Irish stage and screen character actor who appeared in Barbarella, The Verdict and the BBC's 1969 sitcom Me Mammy

For a performer of such fame and versatility, the distinguished Irish character actor Milo O'Shea, who has died aged 86, is not associated with any role in particular, or indeed any clutch of them. He was chiefly associated with his own expressive dark eyes, bushy eyebrows, outstanding mimetic talents and distinctive Dublin brogue.

His impish presence irradiated countless fine movies – including Joseph Strick's Ulysses (1967), Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982) – and many top-drawer American television series, from Cheers, The Golden Girls and Frasier, right through to The West Wing (2003-04), in which he played the chief justice Roy Ashland.

He had settled in New York in 1976 with his second wife, Kitty Sullivan, in order to be equidistant from his own main bases of operation, Hollywood and London. The...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Count this one among the most-requested DVDs to come from the Warner Archive. Young Cassidy is based on Irish poet Sean O'Casey's multi-volume autobiography. (O'Casey often used the pseudonym "John "O'Casey" in in these works that chronicle his life in Ireland.) The film was started by director John Ford but when the elderly director fell ill, Jack Cardiff took over. The production bears plenty of hallmarks of a Ford production, but under Cardiff's direction the it has an appropriately harder edge and less sentimentality than it probably would have had if Ford had completed the film. Rod Taylor gives another fine performance as the titular character, a charismatic, roughshod young man who resents being born into poverty under the heel of the British government with scant opportunity for upward mobility. Although Cassidy can drink and brawl with the best of them, he is an intellectual at heart.

Vivacious Irish actor best known for her role opposite Albert Finney in Tom Jones

The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93, will for ever be remembered for her lubricious meal-time munching and swallowing opposite Albert Finney in Tony Richardson's 1963 film of Tom Jones. Eyes locked, lips smacked and jaws rotated as the two of them tucked into a succulent feast while eyeing up the afters. Sinking one's teeth into a role is one thing. This was quite another, and deliciously naughty, the mother of all modern mastication scenes.

Redman and Finney were renewing a friendship forged five years earlier when both appeared with Charles Laughton in Jane Arden's The Party at the New (now the Noël Coward) theatre. Redman was not blamed by the critic Kenneth Tynan for making nothing of her role as Laughton's wife. "Nothing," he said, "after all, will come of nothing.

It was rumored earlier this year that Liam Neeson would return to reprise his role as Ra's al Ghul in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. He was spotted on the set of the film, but until today there's been no confirmation of his involvement. Warner Bros. made the announcement in the production notes for the film that says,

Neeson next appears in Peter Berg's actioner "Battleship," and he also will be seen in Christopher Nolan's much-anticipated action thriller "The Dark Knight Rises.

It makes perfect sense to me that his character would be back as this Batman finale as we've heard Nolan would bring everything back around in full circle in the franchise. I can't wait to see what this film has in store for us! I just can't help but think it's going to be mind blowing.

Josh Pence is playing Ra's al Ghul in the films flashbacks.

French actor who played several classic roles on stage and dubbed the voice of Marlon Brando in The Godfather

In order to fully appreciate the wide-ranging acting talents of Michel Duchaussoy, who has died from a heart attack aged 73, one would have to be both French-speaking and resident in France. To those less fortunate, the knowledge of Duchaussoy is restricted to his striking appearances in several Claude Chabrol movies, and others by Alain Jessua, Louis Malle and Patrice Leconte, which were among the relatively few of his many films to be released in Britain and the Us.

In France, Duchaussoy was equally known as a television actor, whose voice was also recognisable from his dubbing of cartoon characters and stars such as Marlon Brando, in The Godfather. Prolific as he was in films and television, Duchaussoy was celebrated mainly for his 20-year tenure with the Comédie-Française theatre in Paris. There,...

Stephen Lang discusses the authenticity of White Irish Drinkers, Avatar 2, Terra Nova, and much more

2009 was a banner year for actor Stephen Lang, who appeared in The Men Who Stare at Goats, Public Enemies and this little movie called Avatar you may have heard of. 2011 is shaping up to be another fine year for the celebrated actor, with roles in Conan the Barbarian and the highly-anticipated Fox sci-fi series Terra Nova. Before those larger projects are released, though, Stephen Lang stars in White Irish Drinkers, which doesn't have the genre appeal of those previous titles, but packs an enormous dramatic punch. Stephen Lang turns in a phenomenal performance as Patrick, a hard-drinking Brooklyn dock worker who takes out his aggressions on his wife, Margaret (Karen Allen) and sons Brian and Danny (newcomers Nick Thurston and Geoffrey Wigdor).

I recently had the chance to speak with Stephen Lang over the phone about this fantastic indie drama,...

Broadway musical theatre writer who wrote the libretto for Fiddler on the Roof and the screenplay for the 1971 film

Joseph Stein, who has died aged 98, was the last of the great Broadway musical theatre writers coming out of New York revue and television comedy after the second world war. Most famously, he wrote the book, or libretto, for Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and Zorba (1968). "There are no limitations to the subject for a musical," Stein once said, "just as there are no limitations to the subject for a play or a novel. The only limitation that I can see is that it has to have an honesty about the relationship of people to each other."

He cast his net wide, shaping not only the Ukrainian shtetl stories of Sholom Aleichem into the tale of Tevye the milkman and his five daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, but also drawing, perhaps surprisingly,...

A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and Huston

For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.

There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.

In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction,...

Tony Award-winning Irish actress Anna Manahan has died of multiple organ failure at the age of 84.

Manahan, whose career on the stage, television and film spanned over 60 years, died on Sunday in Waterford, Ireland.

She made her Broadway debut in Brian Friel's Lovers in 1969, which earned her a Tony nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Drama.

But it was her role as Mag Folan in famed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's 1996 production Beauty Queen that finally earned her the Tony in 1998 for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama.

She also starred in plays written by Irish writers including J.M. Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Sean O'Casey, and appeared in numerous TV series, most recently in 2004's Fair City.

Her film career saw her star alongside the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth Moore, and Dame Maggie Smith, while her best-known roles were in 1991's Hear My Song and 1994's A Man of No Importance, featuring Albert Finney and Sir Michael Gambon.

In 2002, Manahan was granted the freedom of the city of Waterford for life achievement in the arts.

She is survived by two brothers, Val and Joe.