Doran tours with Benson and other managements, and plays in the West End before setting up his own company in 1920. He leads it for eleven years, before leaving Britain to work in India. On his return he works on stage and makes occasional television appearances.
Doran is the son of Charles Jenkins Doran. He is educated in Cork and privately. In 1899, he makes his stage debut as a member of Frank Benson’s touring company, in Julius Caesar at the Theatre Royal, Belfast. He remains with Benson for two and a half years, during which he makes his London debut, as Captain MacMorris in Henry V at the Lyceum Theatre.
In October 1910, returning to England, Doran plays La Tribe in Count Hannibal at the New Theatre, after which he is Pistol in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Garrick Theatre to the Falstaff of Asche. For the next ten years he plays in new, ephemeral works, interspersed with classics. Among his roles in the latter are Constantine Levin in Anna Karenina (1913), Douglas in Henry IV, Part 1and the Constable of France in Henry V (1914) in London, and a variety of Shakespeare parts at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (1919).
In February 1920, Doran begins touring with his own Shakespearean company, playing Hamlet, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Brutus in Julius Caesar, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Prospero in The Tempest, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Falstaff, Henry V, and Jaques in As You Like It. He has a keen eye for rising talent, and among his recruits are Noel Streatfeild, Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Edith Sharpe, Norman Shelley, Abraham Sofaer, Francis L. Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.
In 1931, Doran goes to India as director of Shakespeare’s plays at the State Theatre in Jhalawar and then on to Bombay where he performs primarily in Shakespeare on the radio. He returns to England in 1937. His last London appearance is in Song of Norway (1949). His last Shakespearean role in the theatre is Time in The Winter’s Tale (1951). He continues to act on stage in other parts until 1954. He appears on BBC Television as a senator in Othello in 1950 and Adabashev, the tragedian in Curtain Down in 1952.
Doran dies in Folkestone on the south coast of England on April 5, 1964, at the age of 87. An article on him published by Emory University in 2003 sums up his career thus:
On stage in one role or another, Doran’s fifty-seven years in the theatre made him a major force in the profession, particularly in his productions of Shakespeare. Such was his energy and enthusiasm that he kept alive for a few more years the actor-manager system when the major talents, men like Tree, Benson, and Irving, had dissolved their companies. Doran was indeed the last of his theatrical breed.
In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joins two of her sisters, Niamh (as Irina) and Sorcha (as Olga), and her father, Cyril Cusack (as Chebutykin) for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov‘s tragicomedy Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also features Niamh’s husband, Finbar Lynch, as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production wins the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.
One of Cusack’s best known stage roles is Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry in 1998, in which she plays the principal role of Mai O’Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National Theatre. For this she wins the 1998 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress, the 1998 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress and her fourth Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2006-07 she stars with Rufus Sewell in Tom Stoppard‘s Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Royal Court Theatre in London which transfers to the West End and Broadway, winning Cusack her fifth Olivier Award nomination and her second Tony Award nomination.
In 2015, Cusack returns to Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, where she begins her theatre career. She appears in the world première of Mark O’Rowe‘s play Our Few and Evil Days, acting opposite long-time collaborator Ciarán Hinds. She wins the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Actress.
Cusack stars with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman (1970). She guest stars in an episode of The Persuaders! (1971), a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975, she makes three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character Roz.
Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver’s Travels (1995), Have Your Cake and Eat It (1997) for which Cusack wins the Royal Television Society‘s RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness’s The Hen House (1989) for BBC Television. She stars in the title role of George du Maurier‘s Trilby (1976), in an adaptation for the BBC’s Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also stars in the BBC mini-series North & South (2004, from the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell) as Mrs. Thornton. She stars in the BBC sitcom Home Again (2006) and appears in the TV series Camelot (2011), which runs for one season. She has featured roles in the mini-series The Deep (2014) and the series Marcella (2016), an eight-episode murder mystery.
Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributes to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today (1994). The book analyses modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.
Cusack marries British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and they have two sons, Samuel James and Maximilian Paul. Prior to marrying Irons, she gives birth to a son in 1967 and places the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, reveals that Cusack is the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett. The two have since been reunited.
Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. In 1998, she is named, along with her husband, in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the British Labour Party. In August 2010, she signs the “Irish artists’ pledge to boycott Israel” initiated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
(Pictured: Sinéad Cusack reciting poetry for the British Library in October 2021)
In 2009, Shaw collaborates with Deborah Warner again, taking the lead role in Tony Kushner‘s translation of Bertolt Brecht‘s Mother Courage and Her Children. In a 2002 article for The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen describes their professional relationship as “surely one of the most richly creative partnerships in theatrical history.” Other collaborations between the two women include productions of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechuan and Henrik Ibsen‘s Hedda Gabler, the latter adapted for television.
Shaw appears in season four of American TV show True Blood. Her character, Marnie Stonebrook, has been described as an underachieving palm reader who is spiritually possessed by an actual witch. Her character leads a coven of necromancer witches who threaten the status quo in Bon Temps, erasing most of Eric Northman‘s memories and leaving him almost helpless when he tries to kill her and break up their coven.
Woffington’s father is believed to have been a bricklayer, and, after his death, the family becomes impoverished. Her mother is obliged to take in washing while Peg sells watercress door to door. It is said that she is walking through a marketplace as a pre-teen and happens upon Madame Signora Violante, a famous tightrope walker. Violante is so immediately enthralled by Peg’s beautiful face that she accompanies her home and asks her mother permission to take her in as her apprentice.
Around 1730, Violante features Woffington as Polly Peachum in a production of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. This serves as a springboard for her fame in Dublin, and she continues dancing and acting in the area playing Dorinda in an adaptation of The Tempest at the Theatre Royal, Dublin in 1735 and joining the Smock Alley Theatre to perform with well-known actor David Garrick.
Woffington dances and acts at various Dublin theaters until her success as Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple leads to her being given her London debut at Covent Garden. She becomes well known as an actress thereafter.
Woffington enjoys success in the role of Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer. She performs at Drury Lane for several years and later returns to Dublin, appearing in a variety of plays. Her most well-received performances are in comic roles, such as elegant women of fashion like Lady Betty Modish and Lady Townley, and breeches roles. She is impeded in the performance of tragedy by a harsh tone in her voice that she strives to eliminate.
Woffington lives openly with David Garrick, the foremost actor of the day, and her other love affairs are numerous and notorious. She becomes friend and mentor to the socialite/actress sisters, Elizabeth and Maria Gunning, and also shares the stage with the likes of Charles Macklin, Kitty Clive, and the tragedienne Susannah Maria Arne.
Though Woffington is popular with society figures, she is not always favored by her competition. She tends to create rivalries with similar-type actresses at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Her fiercest rivalry is with “equally peppery” actress Kitty Clive. According to Garrick biographer Thomas Davies, “No two women in high life ever hated each other more unreservedly than these two great dames of the stage.” When she returns to Covent Garden, rivalries with these women and with the manager, John Rich, eventually send her back to Dublin, where she is unrivaled and celebrated at the Smock Alley Theatre.
Rich decides to start a Beefsteak Club in 1749, also known as the Sublime Society of Steaks or “the Club.” Some of its members include Garrick and William Hogarth, as well as many other London celebrities. Not only is Woffington the first female member of the all-male dining club, in 1750 she becomes president of the club by election. She also educates and supports her sister and cares for and pensions her mother.
For whatever reason, Woffington leaves Garrick in about 1744 and moves to Teddington, into a house called Teddington Place. In 1754 she becomes the beneficiary of the will of the Irish impresario Owen Swiny. In 1756, she performs the part of Lady Randolph in Douglas, a part which finds a later exponent in Sarah Siddons.
On May 3, 1757, Woffington is playing the part of Rosalind in As You Like It when she collapses on stage. She rallies but would never act again, lingering with a wasting illness. She dies in Queen Square, Westminster on March 28, 1760. She is buried in St. Mary with St. Alban, the parish church in Teddington.
seamus dubhghaill 