Going To Tennesse

There is no doubt that Andrew McCarthy has known many magical moments as an actor. He has, after all, appeared in Broadway productions such as Sideman and The Boys of Winter as well as numerous TV and film roles, including Mulholland Falls, Pretty in Pink, Less Than Zero and St. Elmo’s Fire.
One particular highlight was his role as young writer Tom in Tennessee Williams’s wonderful play The Glass Menagerie.

He is a perfect choice for the role of narrator in the production of A Distant Country Called Youth, part of the forthcoming Galway Arts Festival. It’s a one-man show that powerfully illuminates a series of letters by Tennessee Williams to his family, friends, lovers, agents, producers and literary luminaries over a 20 year period.
For lovers of plays such as The Glass Menagerie it also chronicles the mental deterioration of Tennessee Williams’ sister Rose, who inspired the play’s central female character of Laura. So in many ways, doing this one-man show is like returning home for Andrew McCarthy.
“I guess you could say it is, yes” he says, speaking on the phone from New York. “But the show is actually based on The Collected Letters of Tennessee Williams and they start from the time he was seven years old and actually end after the success of The Glass Menagerie, when he is starting to write his second play about some streetcar in New Orleans.
“But it incorporates a lot of his early struggle when he was writing on shoeboxes, working in a factory, afraid he’d never make it as a writer and that he’d never be a success. Williams, to me, really is, I think, the best America has to offer as a playwright. Him and Eugene O’ Neill. I did The Glass Menagerie several years ago and every night I would love going to the theatre even more than the night before. And I’d never had that experience with any other writer.”
That said, A Distant Country Called Youth does end on that “high note” when Tennessee was finally accepted as a writer. In other words it avoids his tragic descent into pill and alcohol addictions which, according to McCarthy, feels “pickled many of his later plays, even though there are moments of brilliance in them all”.
Yet this production does also end with quotes from an essay Williams once prophetically wrote called The Catastrophe of Success. McCarthy, however, is clearly happy that it chronicles the earlier years of his hero’s life.
“I’ve done this show twice here in the States and I must say it is a total joy to perform, too, because Tennessee Williams also was a beautiful letter writer and even that is a lost art,” he explains. "And it’s great for me to see that Tennessee’s play are still being staged so widely. There are two productions of his work right here now on Broadway.”
At this point McCarthy is surprised to hear that this has not been the case here in Ireland since the playwright’s death and readily agrees “it would be wonderful” if A Distant Country Called Youth reminded not just audiences but other actors, producers and directors of how magnificent Williams was. He also is surprised to hear that there was a distant time in Ireland, back in the ‘60s when the Catholic Church had a production of The Rose Tattoo banned because at one point in the play, a condom fell out of the pocket of the leading actor! He laughs loudly at the anecdote.
“But that, to me, is another great thing about Tennessee Williams” he says. “He explored sexuality in a really truthful, complex and innovative way in many of his plays. And there is a bit of that going on in the betters. He does get a little bawdy and explicit in relation to some of his exploits.”
But that, too, is the Tennessee Williams we all love, isn’t it?
‘It’s certainly the one I love!”

A Distant Country Called Youth will play at the Bank of Ireland Theatre NUI Galway from Monday July 18 to Sunday July 24.