Marie Rooney, who is leaving her job as deputy director of the Gate Theatre after almost 30 years, reflects on the Edwards-MacLiammóir era, her highlight productions and the time she saved Ralph Fiennes, writes Michael Dwyer.
LAST NIGHT Marie Rooney was guest of honour at a celebratory party hosted by the Gate Theatre in Dublin. After 30 years working at that theatre, and the past 12 as deputy director, she has set up her own company, Highlight Productions, but she will be playing a similar role. "I'm doing much the same as I did at the Gate - marketing and PR, event management, and producing," she explains at her Sandymount home, which now houses her office.
""The company is up and running. I've got a good mix of projects across the arts, and I've more in the pipeline. It's too early to talk about most of them, but I am working for the Irish Theatre Institute's conference in Dublin. And I'm an associate producer on something that will be happening in the summer. I also hope to do my own productions, when I have the right play with the right people - director, cast. And I will do that."
What prompted her to leave the Gate after all those years? "Well, I had thought about it from time to time," she says. "But I was always so busy, going from one project to another to another. I thought that if I didn't do it now, I would never do it. I've been at the Gate for a long time. I loved it, and I really loved the work, but you begin to repeat everything, even though every production is different. I felt it was time to give it a go and fly solo."
Being deputy director involved "a bit of everything", she says. "That's the great thing about having worked at the Gate. It's a small organisation and I got very broad-based management skills. I was involved in the creative side, in the running of the theatre, the building projects, and the marketing and publicity, all of which was done in-house." Just about everything apart from going on stage and acting? "I never wanted to do that," she laughs. "I would run in the opposite direction."
BORN IN DRUMCONDRA, Rooney was on a cross-country holiday through the US in 1978 when she broke the trip for a family wedding in Dublin. "While I was back, I needed some money," she says. "I went into one of these agencies, and they sent me up to 4 Harcourt Terrace." It was a fateful appointment. This was the home and office of Hilton Edwards, the legendary actor, producer and director who, in 1928, founded the Gate with his distinguished partner, Micheál MacLiammóir.
"It was just fantastic," Rooney says. "I consider myself very lucky. I found myself in the right place at the right time. It was a temp job, but they asked me to stay on because they felt I had the right mix. I was good at organising and at accounts." The only other staff members were Edwards and general manager Mary Cannon.
"Hilton was in the office every day," Rooney recalls. "He was still directing and acting. Micheál had died in March that year, so Hilton was still very upset because they had been such a wonderful partnership. I learned so much from him. He had done it all and he was so good at it. It was like a masterclass to be around him. And he was hugely entertaining."
At the time the Gate staged Edwards-MacLiammóir productions for six months of the year, and hosted visiting companies for the other six. The city's theatres often struggled to attract audiences in that era of economic gloom. In 1981, Rooney went to London to check out some West End shows. One was Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer, whose Equus had been very successful at the Gate.
"I suggested running Amadeus to help fill the coffers," she says. "Mary Cannon tried to get the rights, but because the play was still running in the West End, they wouldn't give them. So I suggested getting Hilton on the phone, because I knew they couldn't say no to him. They gave the rights, and it was a big hit. That was my first foray into producing. It was so popular that we brought it back the next year."
After Edwards died in 1982, the Gate board appointed Michael Colgan, who had been running Dublin Theatre Festival, as its new director. Was he a quiet, shy, unassuming young man back then? "No, I don't think there was ever a time when Michael was quiet, shy or unassuming," Rooney replies. Colgan came in "full of energy and ideas", she says. "I knew that the Gate had huge potential, and Michael was absolutely the right person to bring it on. It was bit like pioneering in those days, and I loved the challenge of filling the houses."
The new regime enjoyed early successes with Patrick Mason's productions of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (on its long overdue Irish premiere) and George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.
In the summer of 1986, they hit the jackpot with Joe Dowling's masterly production of Juno and the Paycock, which featured Donal McCann, John Kavanagh, Geraldine Plunkett and Maureen Potter. "It wowed everybody," Rooney says, with an infectious enthusiasm. "I always sat in on the first readings, when everyone would sit around a table, and from the very first reading of Juno, you could tell that everything worked. It was that perfect combination. You could have charged in for that reading."
Following its triumph at the Gate, the production toured to the Edinburgh and Jerusalem festivals, and played for three weeks at the New York International Festival of the Arts. "That was unforgettable," Rooney says. "I went over in advance, to sell the show to Irish groups and drum up some business. At our opening night party, we decided not to bring in the New York Times review. If it's not a good review, you know what happens: end of party. On our way to the party, Michael and I bought the paper, and it was a rave review. So Michael changed his mind and brought the review to the party. And we played to packed houses."
It seems all the more appropriate that Rooney's new company is named Highlight Productions, given all the many highlights she recalls from her time at the Gate. One was the theatre's first production of Waiting for Godot. "Louis le Brocquy did the set and I'm a very big fan of his," she says, "so to come in to the Gate and to see him painting was something very special.
"There was our first Beckett festival in 1991, with all 19 plays, an academic programme in Trinity, art exhibitions and an audiovisual programme. For three weeks, the whole of Dublin was taken over with Beckett. It was incredible, an absolute roller coaster. It had never been done before and it was a brilliant idea. It was all Michael's idea. We brought the Beckett festival to New York in 1996, where it was a great success. In the same year, we had seven shows at the Gate, Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney on Broadway, Great Expectations in Belfast, Happy Days in London and Godot in Kilkenny. What a year! And the next year we did the Pinter festival and six other productions at the Gate, five shows in Melbourne and two on a national tour."
Down the years, Rooney worked with many international actors and directors, but despite the profession's image for producing prima donnas, she says she encountered no unreasonable demands - not even from Steven Berkoff. "Nobody asked for pink water," she laughs. "There are times when creative people get under pressure, and I understand that." Her well-known tact and flair for managing difficult situations were stretched when Ralph Fiennes starred in Friel's Faith Healer at the Gate in 2006. Two hours before the show opened, Fiennes's partner Francesca Annis announced their separation through her lawyer.
I mention that I spotted Rooney ejecting a photographer who had sneaked into the theatre. "In the nicest possible way," she insists. "They were stalking him. They were across the road, trying to get photographs through the windows of the green room. I felt sorry for him. It's a huge part and he was wonderful in it, absolutely stunning. He is so focused."
And then, about 15 minutes into Fiennes's lengthy opening monologue, a mobile rang incessantly in the audience. "That's an ongoing problem," she says. "Something has to be done about it." A few years earlier, when Frances McDormand and Liam Cunningham were playing Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Gate, there was another awkward opening-night moment. When the conflict between Blanche and Stanley turned physical, a woman towards the rear of the auditorium yelled encouragement at Blanche to hit Stanley. "The actors were great," Rooney says. "They just went with the flow, despite all the shouting." Mobiles and shouting apart, first nights at the Gate are generally more refined affairs.
WHATEVER ABOUT DEALING with actors and directors, how was it for her to work so closely with Michael Colgan, whose outspoken nature was illustrated in his public confrontations with the Arts Council over grant aid? "What can I say about Michael that has not been said before?" she replies. "He has a very strong personality, but so have I, and I think that was a good mix, and good for the Gate. It was a very good dynamic. He's a perfectionist, and so am I, and we were both focused on the Gate doing well."
Surely they had a few blazing rows? "Of course we had, but there was such an energy going into the shows that we were always planning ahead to the next show and to the one after that, and then the building projects, including the new wing that will open before the end of this year." Were there any times when they didn't speak to each other? "Of course not," she says, laughing out loud before turning serious. "Where would be the advantage in that? I always prefer to deal with something, get it over with and move on."
As she was moving on to her new venture with Highlight Productions, it must have felt strange on her last day working at the Gate after a few months short of 30 years. "It did," she says, "but I suppose I also felt that I was excited about doing something else. There were moments throughout that time that were very poignant and nostalgic, such as my last first reading, which was for The Glass Menagerie. The Gate will always be in my heart."