Donal McCann, Irish stage, film, and television actor, dies from pancreatic cancer in Dublin on July 17, 1999. He is best known for his roles in the works of Brian Friel and for his lead role in John Huston‘s last film, The Dead (1987). In 2020, he is listed as number 45 on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s greatest film actors.
McCann is born on May 7, 1943, in Terenure, Dublin. His father is John J. McCann, a playwright and politician who serves twice as Lord Mayor of Dublin. Although he acts in a production of his father’s Give Me a Bed of Roses at Terenure College in 1962, he briefly studies architecture before taking a job as a trainee sub-editor at the Evening Press which allows him to pursue part-time acting classes at the Abbey School of Acting at the same time. He joins the Abbey Players in the late 1960s.
Among his most important early roles are Cú Chulainn in W. B. Yeats‘s On Baile Strand (1966), and as Estragon in a seminal production of Samuel Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot, partnering with Peter O’Toole as Vladimir (1969).
McCann’s career includes parts in many plays from the Irish literary canon, including Tarry Flynn, The Shaughran, and the Gate Theatre‘s highly acclaimed production of Seán O’Casey‘s classic Juno and the Paycock in the 1980s (McCann plays the “Paycock” (Captain Boyle) opposite Geraldine Plunkett as Juno and John Kavanagh as Joxer Daly) as well as a subsequent production of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars.
McCann develops a particularly fruitful relationship with the playwright Brian Friel. He plays the role of Gar O’Donnell, the public figure, in a film adaptation of Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1970 and, despite popular belief, he never plays either public or private Gar on stage. He gives a landmark performance as Frank Hardy, the title character, in Faith Healer in 1980 (a role he reprised in 1994), continuing his relationship with Friel through productions of Translations (1988) and Wonderful Tennessee (1993).
Friel says that McCann’s work “contains extraordinary characteristics that go beyond acting … it is deeply spiritual.” Perhaps McCann’s most renowned role is as Thomas Dunne in Sebastian Barry‘s The Steward of Christendom. He wins the London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre) as best actor for this role in 1995. He reprises this role in a 1996 production at the Gate Theatre, Dublin and, following a twelve-week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997, his “performance of unarguable greatness” (The New York Observer) had Newsweek hailing him as “a world-class star,” and The New York Times referring to this “astonishing Irish actor…widely regarded as the finest of them all.”
On the London stage, McCann plays in Prayer for My Daughter opposite Antony Sher (1978), and is Jean to Dame Helen Mirren‘s Julie in Miss Julie (1971). This is filmed for the BBC, and he much later plays Judge Brack with Fiona Shaw in the title role of Henrik Ibsen‘s Hedda Gabler, a production filmed for the BBC in 1993.
McCann begins his film career early, in 1966, in Walt Disney Pictures’s The Fighting Prince of Donegal (this later becomes a TV series). More significant roles include the title character’s father Shamie in Cal and one of the feuding brothers in Thaddeus O’Sullivan‘s December Bride (1990). He works a number of times with Neil Jordan (in Angel, The Miracle and High Spirits).
His best-known film role is as Gabriel Conroy in The Dead (1987), starring opposite Anjelica Huston and directed by her father, John Huston. Significant late roles include Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Stealing Beauty (1996) and in John Turturro‘s Illuminata (released in 1999, after McCann’s death).
McCann’s television work includes the featured role of Phineas Finn in the BBC’s serialised adaptation of Anthony Trollope‘s The Pallisers, Willie Burke in RTÉ‘s Prix Italia drama entry The Burke Enigma (1979) and Barney Mulhall in RTÉ’s Strumpet City (1980), as well as many one-off parts.
McCann plays in Bob Quinn‘s Irish language film Poitín (1979) and in Quinn’s somewhat experimental The Bishop’s Story (1995). After hearing that McCann is ill, Tom Collins asks Quinn to make a TV documentary about McCann for RTÉ called It Must Be Done Right (1999), after a remark by McCann on his craft. The film airs on RTÉ a week before McCann’s death.
In his private life, McCann is a quiet and unassuming man, but he battles both depression and alcoholism all his life. He has many friends in Irish theatre and artistic circles but also across all strata of life. His hobbies include sketching and he is passionate about horse racing.
Remembering McCann on the 25th anniversary of his death, Gerald Smyth writes, “In the melancholy of that life-worn voice could be heard the cadences of a lyric heart.”
seamus dubhghaill 