IT'S an unlikely match. Donal McCann and New York City. The actor personifies tireless dedication, painstaking craftsmanship and subtle characterisation, while New York's theatre audiences, like the city it sell, are surely the most fickle and impatient in the world. Its short lived adulation is typically reserved for celebrity favourites.
Yet in The Steward of Christendom, which recently ended a 12 week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, McCann the unknown not only mastered his audiences, he captivated them. And when a city as tough as this falls for somebody then, like most romantics, it falls hard. Each night, at the play's conclusion, Armani clad theatre goers jumped to their feet, applauding the frowning actor in soiled long Johns.
When McCann gave them a fleeting smile with his final bow, they went wild. So did the critics.
"A performance of unarguable greatness," the New York Observer proclaimed. "A world class star. . . Lear in long johns," wrote Jack Kroll in Newsweek. .... . the astonishing Irish actor. .. widely regarded as the finest of them all. . . a marvel of delicacy," commented the New York Times. "The great Irish actor... brings enormous intensity to the anguish, regret and pride of his characters" wrote Aileen Jacobson in Newsday. Similarly ecstatic reviews appeared in the Daily News, the New Yorker and countless American theatre magazines.
Donal McCann had unintentionally performed a remarkable feat in Sebastian Barry's play. He had by passed celebrity and become a phenomenon. Soon he was being eulogised in religious terms as part epic hero, part martyr. .... . a play and performance that have bestowed the illumination of more than a little clarity and grace," Ben Brantley wrote in the New York Times. ... an ordeal of faith as well as craft," Jack Kroll concluded in his review.
"DONAL who?" Benedict Nightingale asked in his New York Times profile of McCann. When The Steward of Christendom opened in January, most New Yorkers were asking the same question and wondering why they should traipse over to Brooklyn to see an unknown actor in an obscure play.
"Was he in Michael Collins?" a woman asked during the interval. No. Dancing at Lughnasa? No. McCann's last visit to New York was in Brian Friel's Wonderful Tennessee, a play forced to close after just a few performances in 1993. Screen appearances in John Huston's The Dead and, more recently, in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty similarly failed to establish McCann's name in the US. Audiences knew only that he was not Liam Neeson.
"But there is a perception here that some of the best actors are Irish," Aileen Jacobson, of Newsday, comments, "so people will take a chance.
Many who did take a chance were perplexed by The Steward of Christendom but astonished by its central character. "The play is a hard nut for Americans to crack," Jacobson explains. "And because I didn't find it that compelling, McCann's performance stood out even more. What sets him apart is that he is a very naturalistic actor, not at all flamboyant."
Within a week of the play's opening, New York wanted to know everything about this reticent Mr McCann. They learned that the 53 year old Dubliner lives alone in a small rented house, that he has been engaged several times but never married, that he no longer drinks alcohol and that he believes in God.
New York columnists revealed that McCann's father, John McCann, was a politician and minor playwright whose comedies were frequently staged at the Abbey Theatre and that the actor began his working life as an apprentice journalist, before making his debut as the cardinal of Uganda in Rolf Hochhuth's play The Successor.
Irish audiences are familiar with the rest of the story. In 1968, McCann became a member of the Abbey company and subsequent notable performances included the valet in Strindberg's Miss Jille in 1971 with Helen Mirren, Estragon to Peter O'Toole's Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Boyle in the Gate Theatre production of Juno and the Paycock and Frank Hardy in Brian Friel's Faith Healer.
Perhaps the most startling fact of all to New York readers, however, was Jack Kroll's revelation in Newsweek magazine that McCann .... . has an ego about one twentieth the size of a Hollywood bit player". This makes him an exotic in the self conscious, self promoting world of the dramatic arts.
Kroll, one of America's most influential theatrics, interroom at the Manhattan Downtown Athletic Club.
This tiny room, he's walking around in his short [underpants], the picture of masculine disarray," Mr Kroll recalls.
"But what struck me most was a kind of innocence about him. He was not cultivating a persona. With many actors you quickly realise when you meet them that there are 17 layers between you and them. But he's right there, unguarded and totally open to the world. That's very seductive."
Watching Donal McCann onstage as Thomas Dunne in The Steward of Christendom, Kroll perceived the same combination of strength and vulnerability that so impressed him in McCann's off stage manner.
"He did not play Dunne as an evaporating spirit," the critic stresses. "Instead there was tremendous power, the final residue of human strength in an old man on his last mental legs."
If this sounds like the actor as primarily a force of nature, Jack Kroll, quickly corrects this impression. McCann is also a superb technician. In the hands of the wrong kind of first rate actor, those long passages could have bored you. But he modulated them like a great musician executing a difficult and lengthy passage, holding his audience."
Donal McCann reminds Jack Kroll of the great German expressionist actors of the silent movie era. To Bernardo Bertolucci he "looked like a criminal; he had the quality of danger". Many critics have compared him to Anthony Hopkins and Bob Hoskins.
New Yorkers now speculate that Hollywood must be in his future. "He has an extraordinary entree to the US after this success," observes Aileen Jacobson of Newsday. "He can come here anytime and do anything he likes. But I wonder if he could make his performances small enough for the screen."