A flair for comedy

Actress Lynn Cahill has a flair for the comic. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that she's also the producer and co-founder of the Murphy's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny. More likely it's to do with her easy, entertaining personality and her open, warm face.

Currently in rehearsals for the Gate Theatre's production of Blithe Spirit, Noel Coward's comic farce, Cahill comes late into the room where I am waiting. "Sorry, I wanted to take off my wig before the interview," she says, "I didn't want to scare you." She's straight from an overrun rehearsal.

It's one of those overcast but warm "close" days that we call summer. Cahill in her floral dress immediately conjures up the image of her performance as Rose in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, a role she recently played at the Abbey.

I am surprised when she informs me that "this is my first interview".

Cahill is someone whose work I've seen often over the years. True, she may not play the romantic female lead and is more often cast as the comic relief or in a character part.

But the fact that she is the recipient of a Sunday Tribune "Best Actress of the Year" accolade would lead one to believe that she should be paid more attention.

Born in England but growing up in Clondakin, Cahill came to theatre fairly early. "I left school when I was 16 and was fairly aimless for a couple of years," she says. "I didn't go to college or anything like that. I was in a terrible job and my brother Paul showed me an advertisement for the Oscar Theatre School of acting, which is out in Ballsbridge, and said that it might be something that I'd like to do.

"I did a year there, and the class I was with became Wet Paint Theatre Company. So I very quickly got involved full-time." Cahill's biggest early success came with the original production of Dermot Bolger's play The Lament for Arthur Cleary - it won a Fringe First at Edinburgh and did a US run. "It was a massive success," says Cahill, "and now it's taught in drama schools. It would make you feel ancient."

It was an early high point for Cahill. Surely the thing to do was to stay in Dublin or relocate to London, make use of her newly high profile and launch her career onto a new plane. Not for Cahill.

She and friend Richard Cook packed their bags and moved to Kilkenny to set up Bickerstaffe Theatre Company. For the next few years she'd end up doing more producing than acting.

"Everyone said, 'you're mad, you're absolutely mad', because I was really on a roll. I was really doing well at the time. But at that point Richard and I had this harebrained idea that we wanted to pack our bags and leave - we wanted a bit of country living. It was more exciting the idea of creating our own work. We wanted to work with people like Conall Morrison and John Crowley, people who were emerging at that time."

Despite Bickerstaffe's success, with such groundbreaking productions as True Lines, devised by director John Crowley and the play's cast, Cahill obviously didn't feel busy enough at Bickerstaffe.

In 1995 the enterprising Cook-Cahill duo also co-founded the annual Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, in Kilkenny, of which Cahill is currently producer.

If that wasn't enough for her, she's producing and writing a series for RT╔ radio as well. Is she something of a workaholic? "I don't remember the last time I was out of work," she says. "I'm not boasting, but when I don't see a job coming I create work for myself. Yes, I have a major work ethic, something I got from my father."

So, what else has she been up to? "I did the Barabbas/John Banville show, God's Gift last year, then I went back to Kilkenny to produce the comedy festival. Then the day after the festival finished I was up here starting rehearsals for this. After Blithe Spirit, "I'm doing two shows with Barabbas at Project. I'm also producing and co-writing that pilot for RT╔ radio during the daytime. It'll be aired in the autumn. And I'll go back to Kilkenny again next year to produce the comedy festival."

With a work rate like that its no wonder that her career is making inroads. Looking at Lynn Cahill, you'd wonder where actors get their undeserved reputation as lazy layabouts.

But what of Blithe Spirit, the story of a man's dead wife coming back to haunt his new union; a love triangle from beyond the grave?

Cahill's role as Mrs Bradman sees her back in comic mode, offering some light relief. Cahill loves the part and the show, which she says is "a lot of fun".

But she adds that she'd like to be cast in "serious" roles in the future, expressing a desire to play Juno, and, "have a play written for me by Tom Murphy and Frank McGuinness...I'm only messing".

As she so often does, the Cahill laughs.

Blithe Spirit, directed by Alan Stanford, opens at the Gate Theatre tomorrow night.