seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (play)


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Death of Actress Ronnie Masterson

Ronnie Masterson, one of the best-known Irish stage actors of her generation from the 1940s to the 1970s, dies at the age of 87 in Rush, County Dublin, on February 10, 2014. Following her stage career she builds a solid film and television career with RTÉ, and independent directors including Peter Kosminsky, Alan Parker and Neil Jordan.

Masterson is born in Dublin on April 4, 1926. She trains at the Abbey Theatre and first appears on stage there in 1944. At the Abbey, she meets and then marries actor Ray McAnally in 1951, and they remain married until his death in 1989, although they reside in different homes; her husband with Irish actress Britta Smith. McAnally and Masterson have four children: Conor, Aonghus, Máire and Niamh.

In the late 1960s Masterson and McAnally leave the permanent and pensionable security of the national theatre to set up their own company, Old Quay Productions. The company brings contemporary American and British theatre to Irish audiences, including Alan Ayckbourn‘s Relatively Speaking, Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bill Naughton‘s Alfie, and Robert Patrick‘s Kennedy’s Children.

Kennedy’s Children nearly bankrupts the company, having to be pulled early in a 14-week run, when playgoers in Dublin mistake its title as an adverse comment on the children of assassinated and revered U.S. president John F. Kennedy, whereas the play is actually a series of monologues exploratory of U.S. society in the Vietnam War era. They are rescued by two giants of Irish independent theatre, Phyllis Ryan of Gemini Productions – whose Eblana Theatre the couple had hired- and John B. Keane, who has just published Letters of a Matchmaker , a novel written as a series of letters between a rural matchmaker and his clients.

Film and television work follow, including many episodes of RTÉ soap opera Glenroe, in which Masterson plays Madge O’Regan, and in 1988 her first film, The Dawning, an adaptation of Jennifer Johnston‘s story The Old Jest, which wins first prize as best film at the Montreal World Film Festival and where she acts opposite Anthony Hopkins, Trevor Howard and a young Hugh Grant.

Masterson’s best film work is probably as a memorable Grandma Sheehan in Alan Parker’s screen version of Frank McCourt‘s Angela’s Ashes in 1999, where, in her own words in an interview with her grandson, Aonghus Óg McAnally, she says, “Without doubt I had the best script.”

Other notable film roles include Fools of Fortune, The Real Charlotte and Kosminsky’s dramatisation of the events which led to the Stalker inquiry in Northern Ireland, Shoot to Kill, where she plays Mrs. Tighe opposite her old Abbey colleague Peadar Lamb, as Mr. Tighe.

Speaking to The Irish Times , Lamb remarks how, as a young actor at the Abbey in 1949, Masterson had been a “striking” Kathleen Ní Houlihan in W. B. Yeats‘s play, her height, green eyes and vivid red hair perfect for the part.

Lamb, who serves for many years with Masterson on the committee of Irish Actors’ Equity Association, pays tribute also to her work for other actors: “She didn’t waste words, but spoke very strongly when she did speak.” RTÉ producer Laurence Foster also pays a tribute to this aspect of Masterson’s career on the SIPTU website.

Masterson also plays in the Edinburgh International Festival and in many Dublin Theatre Festival productions. She appears on many series broadcast on RTÉ, BBC and ITV and tours extensively in the United States in her own one woman shows.

In November 2005, Masterson is in the United States again, this time to take the lead role in The Sea Captain, a short film directed by her son, veteran television producer Conor McAnally.

Masterson dies on February 10, 2014, at Rush Nursing Home in Rush, County Dublin. She is buried at St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin.


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Death of Irish Actor Ray McAnally

Ray McAnally, Irish actor and winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s, dies in County Wicklow on June 15, 1989.

McAnally is born on March 30, 1926, in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal. The son of a bank manager, he is educated at Saint Eunan’s College in Letterkenny where he writes, produces and stages a musical called “Madame Screwball” at the age of sixteen. He enters St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth at the age of 18 but leaves after a short time having decided that the priesthood is not his vocation. He joins the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he meets and marries actress Ronnie Masterson.

The couple later forms Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. McAnally makes his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gives a well-received performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.

On television he is a familiar face, often in glossy thriller series like television series The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, and Strange Report. In 1968 he takes the title role in Spindoe, a series charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe, after a five-year prison term. This is a spin-off from another series, The Fellows (1967) in which McAnally had appeared in several episodes as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents very convincingly.

McAnally regularly acts in the Abbey Theatre and at Irish festivals, but in the last decade of life he achieves award-winning notice on TV and films. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earns him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. He earns a second BAFTA award for his role in the BBC’s A Perfect Spy (1987). In 1988 he wins the BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance in A Very British Coup, a role that also brings him a Jacob’s Award. In the last year of his life, he portrays the father of Christy Brown, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in the Academy Award-winning film, My Left Foot (1989).

McAnally dies suddenly of a heart attack on June 15, 1989, at the age of 63, at his home in County Wicklow which he shares with Irish actress Britta Smith. He remains married to actress Ronnie Masterson until his death, although they reside in different homes. He receives a posthumous BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor for his last film, My Left Foot, in 1990.

At the time of his death, McAnally is due to play “Bull McCabe” in Jim Sheridan‘s film The Field. The part eventually goes to Richard Harris who receives an Academy Award nomination for his performance. McAnally had also been cast in the lead role of First and Last, a drama about a man who walked from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Filming is almost a third of the way done when he dies, but the whole play has to be re-filmed, with Joss Ackland taking the role instead.


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Birth of Actor Ray McAnally

Ray McAnally, Irish actor and winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s, is born on March 30, 1926, in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal.

The son of a bank manager, McAnally is educated at Saint Eunan’s College in Letterkenny where he writes, produces and stages a musical called “Madame Screwball” at the age of sixteen. He enters St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth at the age of 18 but leaves after a short time having decided that the priesthood is not his vocation. He joins the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he meets and marries actress Ronnie Masterson.

The couple later forms Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. McAnally makes his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gives a well-received performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.

On television he is a familiar face, often in glossy thriller series like television series The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, and Strange Report. In 1968 he takes the title role in Spindoe, a series charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe, after a five-year prison term. This is a spin-off from another series, The Fellows (1967) in which McAnally had appeared in several episodes as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents very convincingly.

McAnally regularly acts in the Abbey Theatre and at Irish festivals, but in the last decade of life he achieves award-winning notice on TV and films. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earns him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. He earns a second BAFTA award for his role in the BBC’s A Perfect Spy (1987). In 1988 he wins the BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance in A Very British Coup, a role that also brings him a Jacob’s Award. In the last year of his life, he portrays the father of Christy Brown, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in the Academy Award-winning film, My Left Foot (1989).

McAnally dies suddenly of a heart attack on June 15, 1989, at the age of 63, at his home in County Wicklow which he shares with Irish actress Britta Smith. He remains married to actress Ronnie Masterson until his death, although they reside in different homes. He receives a posthumous BAFTA award for his last film in 1990.

At the time of his death, McAnally is due to play “Bull McCabe” in Jim Sheridan‘s film The Field. The part eventually goes to Richard Harris who receives an Academy Award nomination for his performance. McAnally had also been cast in the lead role of First and Last, a drama about a man who walked from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Filming is almost a third of the way done when he dies, but the whole play has to be re-filmed, with Joss Ackland taking the role instead.