Gabriel Byrne in His Own Words on Broadway
The two-time Tony nominee talks about bringing his memoir Walking with Ghosts to New York
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Byrne doesn’t romanticize his life; triumph and trauma get equal treatment. His exhilarating day at the Guinness Brewery bicentennial in 1959 is followed by the pain of corporal punishment at school. There are even moments that inspire tears and laughter simultaneously thanks to Byrne’s wry sense of humor.
“It’s been such a deeply fulfilling part of the experience to be able to witness people really listening, because listening is very profound,” Byrne says. “I’m proud of the writing that allows people that intimacy with me on stage.”
On the night I attended, the audience sat dumbstruck as he talked about being molested by a priest while attending seminary school. Byrne first began discussing the abuse a decade ago; when recalling the event, he describes that night as having been “concreted over” in his mind.
Telling a story like that night after night takes an emotional toll, but Byrne says he has learned to cope and hopes his candidness aids others.
“I wanted to use my life to speak for people who don’t have a voice,” he says. “When talking about grief and abuse and so forth, I always imagine that there’s somebody out there who hasn’t yet spoken to anybody about those things. If they see me stand up and say, ‘Well, look, this is my story,’ that might help them in some way to address the issues in their own lives.”
Although the show has a contemplative tone, it frequently incorporates comedy. Combining the two is inevitable, Byrne says, especially when he talks about religion, like his short-lived childhood belief that the Holy Spirit came to Earth in the form of a pigeon.
“I feel that even in the most serious incidents, there’s some element of comedy, and in comedy there’s some element of tragedy,” he says. “To look back at Catholicism, for example, which was a deadly serious subject when I was a kid in Ireland, some of those things were absolutely ludicrous. From my point of view, it’s right that I should try to make fun of those things because they inspired such fear in me as a child.”
It’s also his first solo outing and he loves connecting with theatregoers with no fourth wall in between. “There are two actors in the play: There’s me on the stage, and then there’s the audience,” Byrne says. “They’re receiving and absorbing and, in their way, answering, because when you listen to the laughter and you listen to the silence that descends in certain moments, that’s pretty powerful. Storytelling is the most ancient form of communication between the listener and the teller. The authenticity of one person on stage telling a story goes back centuries. Being in front of a camera and talking about something is a very, very different form of expression. When you’re in the theatre, you retain the audience’s interest through drama.”
Thankfully, Byrne has led a very dramatic life—on stage and off.
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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for Gabriel Byrne: Walking with Ghosts. Go here to browse all theatre, dance and music offers.
Carey Purcell writes about pop culture and politics for Vanity Fair, Politico and other publications, and blogs at CareyPurcell.com. She recently published her first book: From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theater.
Top image: Gabriel Byrne in his one-man theatrical memoir Walking with Ghosts. Photo by Emilio Madrid.
Carey Purcell writes about pop culture and politics for Vanity Fair, Politico and other publications. In 2019, she published her first book: From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theater.