Interview: In Sunshine or in Shadow: Peter Cormican, Charis Leos, and Cary Michele Miller in McCourt's IRISH

"There are two kinds of people in the world, as ye very well know," Peter Cormican asserts in a lilting accent, "those that are Irish and those that want to be." The English-born actor, son Irish parents - a Protestant mother from Belfast and a Catholic father from Galway - is currently in Maine to make his Maine State Music Theatre/Portland Stage debut in Frank McCourt's play The Irish and How They Got That Way, directed by Marc Robin, which opens in Portland August 19th. The production, a bold new collaboration between two of Maine leading Equity companies, marks an exciting new chapter for both theatres and promises to be one of the season's biggest hits, as it has been in every town its played.

Cormican is joined in our conversation by two of the other four principals from the a small cast that also stars Curt Dale Clark [see BWW interview 5/24/16], Charis Leos and Cary Michele Miller, (and features Cameron Wright and Emily Davis, Ernest Sauceda (fiddler) and two other musicians). Both Leos and Miller are MSMT veterans, but new to McCourt's play. "This is my debut at Portland Stage," Miller says with anticipation. "I always look forward to working with Curt and Charis and Marc, and I am enjoying getting to know Peter. And I am always excited to learn new material and new music."

Leos had appeared once eighteen years ago at Portland Stage in a production of Das Barbecu, a send up of Wagner's Ring cycle, brought to Maine from the Dallas Music Theatre." Like Miller, she says " I was thrilled at the opportunity to return to Portland when Curt asked me to do it. I also think this is a great opportunity to solidify the relationship between the two theatres - one that is beneficial to both companies."

Cormican and Clark, on the other hand, have a history with the McCourt work. Clark played the long-running Chicago production at The Mercury Theatre in 1999 and later at the Fulton in 2009, while Cormican did the reprise at New York's Irish Repertory Theatre in 2001, having taken the show on its national tour the prior year - each of these directed by Charlotte Moore. Cormican also knew Frank McCourt, having met the playwright during the initial rehearsal period for the 2000 tour and then having the pleasure to encounter McCourt and his wife Ellen again at a gala for The Rivalry in which the actor was portraying Stephen Douglas. "Frank was from Limerick and like me, first generation Irish."

Of director/choreographer Marc Robin's Portland production, Cormican says, " Marc has done some pruning and arranging of some of the parts, but it is faithful to the original, and what he brings is an incredible sense of movement and a vision of how he sees the play in its entirety." Cormican, who is working with Robin for the first time is awed by how the director "has the whole show worked out in advance in his head and how quickly he gets it on its feet," noting that Moore was more into process and "we had a much longer rehearsal period." He also comments on what Leos has called "unique to Marc's [Robin's] production" - the set by Anita Stewart that places the action in a New York Irish bar. "The set has different levels, and we are aiming for the feeling of friends talking in a pub after hours. The dialogue of the play is very dense and tricky because there are many direct quotes from speeches of the time, and the syntax of the language is a little different. But we do it as Irish-Americans telling stories and then slipping in and out of accents."

Leos, who has worked with Robin on many occasions, seconds the comments about the director's being "the most organized man in the world. He sent Cary and me, who are new to this, scripts with everything mapped out ahead of time, and he is working around my doing double duty [being in Fiddler on the Roof at the same time as rehearsing Irish] and thus having only two hours of rehearsal on matinee days.

Asked to describe the tone and style of The Irish and How They Got That Way, all three actors wax enthusiastic. Leos says, "I started by telling people it was a history lesson, but it is so much more than that. We play Irish immigrants who are knowledgeable about our people's story - why they emigrated from Ireland, how they were treated when they got to America. It is a history lesson, but told in the most entertaining way you can imagine. There are some heartbreaking moments and some hysterically funny ones as well."

Miller adds, "The tone is a very balanced one between laughter and tears. There are a lot of dates to memorize for us as actors, and you have to be accurate with those."

Cormican demonstrates this by delivering some of his lines from speeches by Charles Trevelyan, the hated British colonial administrator during the potato famine, and Daniel O'Connell, the M.P. leader for Catholic Emancipation. He explains, "Ireland was brutalized by the English throughout its history; she was England's whipping boy. The British denuded her forests to build ships for the Royal Navy, and they exported the potato crop when it could have been used to feed the starving Irish. If there is such a thing as hell, Charles Trevelyan must be there roasting on a spit," he concludes with obvious passion.

One of the great virtues of McCourt's play is the alternation between sadness and humor. Cormican says, "In one sense the play is educational because many people do not really know the full effect the Irish had on this country even before the Revolution when they came as indentured servants or escapees. McCourt brings in facts, figures, some legends. One of the most touching moments comes in recounting the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg where thousands of Irish died killing each other on opposite sides. And they bore the brunt of the fighting because they were too poor to buy their way out of the draft. That led to the 1863 New York draft riots."

Miller notes some of the highlights for her. "I have this one beautiful musical moment, "The Fields of Athenry" in which I am a woman whose loved one has stolen some corn to feed his family, and he is sent to prison. She sings as she watches his ship sail away with him aboard and prays she will see him again. It reminds me of Jean Valjean," she says of the heart-wrenching song. "And then probably the funniest is the "Finnegan's Wake" episode,' she comments alluding to the scene played by Curt Dale Clark and Charis Leos. " Curt plays a reporter come to get the story at the wake and everyone there keeps plying him with drinks until the whole group are drunk. Or there are these one-liners that are just so sharp-witted."

For Leos the saddest moment comes in the scenes describing the potato famine. "My grandfather and my husband are Irish," she says, "and I have been to Dublin, but I never realized the extent of the famine and how centered it was on the poor people who were trying to put food on their table. And the potato, which was their only source of food, was also the only crop that failed because Ireland was exporting so much of it to England. It was very tragic because it did not have to go the way it did." Of the humor in the play Leos remarks, "Even sections which deal with how lowly the Irish were treated when they came to this country are presented in a humorous way, and, of course, there are the stereotypical scenes that poke fun at Irish drinking - when we consume as much alcohol as we can and then still try to function."

As actors, much of this humor comes from the cast's relaxed interaction and the leeway Marc Robin has given them to use some improvisation and ad libbing. "This makes it great fun for us" Leos asserts, "and for the audience as well. Every day it is a slightly different show, and it's one of the things that makes people come back to see it again and again. And because we are four friends performing, we feel comfortable and confident with each other. Marc tells me, 'Now here is where the kibbles and bits will happen,' and with Curt I don't always know where we are going, but it is always fun."

"Improv can be a vulnerable thing to do," Miller explains. "But the way this is staged as friends in a bar setting, we all feel comfortable. Curt, Charis, and Peter are hilarious, and the improvisation makes it real. And then there is a different audience each time which also adds another dimension."

Cormican seconds what his two colleagues have said, adding, "It's a cast in which each one is splendidly talented in his/her way. We are all very chuffed, as they say," he notes in yet another of his accents using the British expression meaning "delighted."

In addition to the humor and pathos of McCourt's play, there is the powerful dimension of the music. "Irish music is infectious," Miller claims. "For some reason even though it is new to me, this score has come easily to memorize and sing. There is this feeling in the songs of community spirit, and we are all in most of the numbers together, though then we each have some solos."

"The Celtic music is so beautiful, so melancholy," Leos agrees. "It is almost like country music here. They sing about wither the worst-case scenario or the best. Or there are the drinking songs which are great fun and make the audience want to sing along. And then there are the heart-wrenching moments like 'The Ghost of Molly McGuire' or 'Danny Boy.' No one does better than the Irish in telling a sad story."

Cormican, complimenting his fellow cast members, who are "all have incredible voices and can sing REALLY well," says it is hard for him to pick a favorite musical moment in the show, whose range extends from "Thomas Moore ballads to George M. Cohan to U-2." He does cite "Danny Boy" [sung by Clark] using its Irish nickname, "the Derry air" as an inevitable favorite audience moment, but also likes some of the less well-known pieces like the rousing "Anchors Aweigh," "Moonshiner," or "Mrs. McGrath."

For each of the three actors, The Irish and How They Got That Way represents a special moment in their busy professional careers. For Leos, who sees herself as a character actress and whose resume embraces a wide spectrum of colorful musical roles, the past year since spending the 2015 summer at MSMT in The Full Monty, Sister Act, The Music Man, and Young Frankenstein, has been devoted to performances in Legally Blonde and the Addams Family at the Fulton Theatre and The Bikinis, a 1960s juke box musical at Pennsylvania's Mountain Playhouse. This summer at MSMT she played her first Yenta in Fiddler and now her first outing in Frank McCourt's play. She says she likes to keep a balance of new and familiar parts in her repertoire to keep from being pigeonholed. "There are some parts I find satisfying to play at the time, but I don't feel the need to revisit them, and then there are others that when I do come back to them, I am at a different point in my life, and it becomes a whole new experience."

For Cormican, the return to The Irish comes after just coming off an off-Broadway run at the York Theatre as Budurus, the secretary to the prince in Frankfurt, in the new Bock-Harnick-Yellen musical, The Rothschilds, for which he also recorded the cast album. Now based in New York after spending years in Toronto and London, the actor, who studied voice at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, has built a long resume which includes three-years as Piangi in the Hal Prince-directed Canadian production of Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera and with it on international tour, and in off-Broadway and regional productions of A Little Night Music, Follies, My Fair Lady, Anything Goes, and The Rivalry. He also became a regular for a period at New York's Irish Repertory Theatre where he appeared not only in McCourt's play, but also in the much-acclaimed 2009 Yeats Project, honoring the classic works of the great Irish literary lion.

And for Miller, these stage appearances mark a special moment in both her personal and professional lives. Married to conductor, composer, music director Aaron McAllister, this past year has encompassed not only motherhood (the couple have a seven-month old baby girl], but a move to the Philadelphia suburbs for McAllister's new university post, as well as a return to the stage in Sister Act at the Fulton, a concert version of Big Fish in Philadelphia, and now Irish here in Portland. The Kansas City-born actress who has appeared at MSMT in Footloose, Sister Act, The Full Monty, Mary Poppins, and Gypsy and who has worked with Robin at the Fulton in Little Women (Jo), Elf, Anne of Green Gables, Hairspray, The Addams Family, and A Chorus Line - (Maggie is one of her signature parts) is also known for her Peter Pan and for the national tours of Little Women (Beth) and Seussical. Drawing an analogy between her dual passions of motherhood and acting and saying she "has the best of both worlds now," Miller quotes her husband: "Aaron [McAllister] says it's the biggest improvisational game we are ever going to play. We'll see what the future holds in store, but hopefully, I will continue to perform. I love affecting other people, making them think, or just entertaining them."

And that is precisely what all three actors hope that The Irish and How They Got That Way will do for Portland Audiences. "I hope we are able to teach them something that is still relevant today - how people are mistreated because other people don't understand them," says Charis Leos. But I also hope that they will have such a good time that they will come back again and often with their friends because I do think it is that kind of show."

Cary Michele Miller echoes these sentiments, "I hope they get a feeling for the Irish past and are curious to learn more about their own pasts, as well - to ask 'how did I get here?' The Irish were looked down on, and now there are different groups who are misjudged. We need to realize that we do not have to look down on anyone or any group. We can all be powerful together, be Americans together."

Trying to articulate what it is that gives The Irish Tradition, culture, and people such appeal, Peter Cormican declares, "It's their hospitality and their welcoming of others even in the poorest times. It's their vibrancy and cheer in the face of adversity, no matter what. McCourt's play offers a wonderful evening of song, dance, stories, quotations, memories, and it reminds us that what the Irish brought to this country, just as every other immigrant group also brings something of its own." And then as if he is accessing his own personal memories of the Emerald Isle and of Skibbereen -"a lovely wee town between West Cork and Kerry," he begins to recite with that Irish lilt: "where the hedges are dripping with the misty rain, dripping with the purple red fuschia and the bright yellow of the golden firs all around."

Perhaps, besides their courage, their humor, their perseverance, it is this inherent poetry, the inborn musicality of the Irish sensibility that shines from Frank McCourt's play. Surely, it is all these qualities which will be showcased on stage in Maine next week, as MSMT and Portland Stage invite audiences to share "these passing tales and glories of the rare old times."

Photo Courtesy MSMT, Cast photo: Roger S. Duncan, photographer

The Irish and How They Got That Way, directed and choreographed by Marc Robin, is a co-production of Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage, presented at Portland Stage, 25 Forest Ave, Portland, from August 16-September 11, 2016. www.msmt.org www.portlandstage.org 207-774-0465