Munster Express Online

From her formidable stage prowess to the terror she could inflict on directors, her eloquent attack on Government plans to axe Medical Cards for the over 70s to her deep affection for her native city, the on and off stage dramas of actress Anna Manahan have been recalled with great fondness throughout the country
over the past week.

The illustrious career of Ms Manahan, who died at Waterford Regional Hospital at the age of 84, spanned 50 years of stage, cinema and television achievement starring opposite such acting greats as Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, and Maggie Smith. In the hours and days following her death on Sunday 8th March, Anna’s wonderful accolades were recalled by many, most notably a Tony Award nomination in 1969 for her role in the Broadway production of Brian’s Friel’s Lovers and, 30 years later, winning the 1998 Tony Award for her portrayal of “Mag” in the critically acclaimed production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Anna never took retirement – one of her final roles was as Ursula in RTE’s Fair City and she remained a cast member right up to her death.

Friend and colleague Jim Nolan, who delivered the eulogy at Anna’s funeral Mass at the Cathedral on Wednesday morning, voiced the opinion of many when he said her place in the history of Irish theatre was secure.

“It’s been a rough winter and here at home and around the country, we’ve lost some of our best. Larry Fanning, John Hewitt, Bruno Browne, Jim Daly, Padraig O’ Faolain, Hugh Leonard, Niall O’ Brien. And now, our Diva, our Leading Lady, our Beauty Queen of William Street, our friend, mentor and sometimes tormentor, the remarkable Anna, whose heart, for all its frailty, we thought would never stop beating.

What strikes me – and I’m sure its occurred to everyone – is that she’d love to be here – not just in spirit as she surely is, but in person. How she would have loved all the attention of the last few days, the glowing and deserved tributes to an extraordinary life and a glorious career. The newspaper headlines, the radio and television slots and especially this. A full house, a captive audience, the leading role and centre stage where she always belonged.

I called to see her just before Christmas and we were making plans. A part I was writing for her in a new play; a radio documentary we would do in the summer. No other voices, just Anna doing what she loved to do – telling her story. But the best laid plans, as they say… And so here I am, a poor substitute for the real thing and wondering how anyone but Anna can do justice to that story.

“Begin, she’d say, at the beginning – none of that fancy stuff where the end is in the middle and the beginning is at the end. Tell them how it started and proceed from there.” And so I will. Tell you how acting was in Anna’s blood from the beginning, how it coursed through her father’s blood and on into hers. There’s a photograph in the family album of daddy playing Coco in the Mikado at the Theatre Royal when Anna was just a little girl but already stage struck. She told me once, how when she was just seven years old she’d stand in the mirror at the house in Lombard Street, pretending to be someone else. And how, looking back, it seemed to her that all that followed was already written in the stars.

Ten years later there’s another photo. This time – seventeen years old and already very beautiful – Anna is in the frame. It’s the school play and her mentor, Sister Redemptoris has cast her as Valerian in St. Cecilia. Who Valerian was is anyone’s guess but Anna is staring hard at the camera and you can see in her eyes she knows where she’s going.

A third photo marks the next step on the journey. Captioned 31st of January, 1942 and taken in the Savoy Café at the post show supper for Waterford Dramatic Society’s production of Quality Street. There she is, third from the left in the second row, just eighteen years old and proudly sporting her Child of Mary Medal – our Anna ready to take on the world. That same year, she went on to appear in Hawk Island by Howard Irving Young and in the following year played Bernie Regan in The Whip Hand by BG McCarthy and Ada Haggett in Emlyn William’s The Late Christopher Bean. If these plays and their writers are now largely forgotten, they did much to nourish Anna’s appetite for the stage and were the springboard for a move that was to determine the course of her life.

Not yet twenty, Anna left the comfort of familiar streets and the security of home behind her and crossed the bridge of Waterford to follow her dream. Her destination was Dublin and the Gaiety School of Acting where she came to the attention of the legendary Abbey actress, Ria Mooney. In 1944, she took her first professional job, when she secured a place in Shelagh Ward’s fit-up company, Equity. If, inevitably, we look back on the fit-up days with rose tinted glasses, those of you who were there will know, as Anna did, that the fit-ups were a formidable if invaluable training ground. Anna often recalled how that company, which included Barry Cassin, Seamus Breathnach, Moira Deady, Geoff and Eddie Golden would travel the length and breadth of Ireland in the back of a tarpaulin covered truck. On arrival, the men would unload and erect the set, whilst the women would go in search of digs, sustenance and, very often, props for that evening’s performance. A week long stay would see the production of an incredible seven plays in seven nights before the play actors would load up and set off to bring their rough magic to another hall in another town.

That tour was a defining experience for Anna. By the time it ended, she was confirmed in her belief that the theatre was her vocation and one way or another, she’s been on the road ever since. Returning to Dublin, she embraced the life of the freelance actor, and throughout the late Forties and Fifties, she worked in every Dublin theatre with the notable exception of the Abbey, where like many another distinguished player of the time, Ernest Blythe’s ‘fluency in Irish’ policy kept the door to the national theatre firmly shut. Incredibly, that door was to remain barred for more than forty years until Anna was invited by Garry Hynes to appear in her production of The Shaughraun in the early Nineties.

And I’m proud to say that Anna’s only other appearance on the stage of our National Theatre was three years ago in my production of Lennox Robinson’s Drama at Inish. Blythe’s stricture notwithstanding, Anna recalls her early years in Dublin and on tour as amongst the happiest of her working life. But in 1949, with the untimely death of her older sister, Billie, Anna had her first encounter with real life tragedy. Those who knew her will know that Anna was devastated by Billie’s death but they will also know that by the turn of the new decade, her grief was tempered by the increasing presence in her life of stage director and fellow actor, Colm O’Kelly. Anna and Colm’s five year romance was sealed by what was, by all accounts, a fairytale wedding at this same altar in the summer of 1955. Less than a year later, that fairytale was to end in tragedy with Colm’s sudden death from polio in a hotel room in Alexandria. Anna and Colm had been touring Egypt with the Edwards-MacLiammoir Company and – as is now the stuff of legend – Anna went on stage that night, dedicating her performance to her late husband.

Michael MacLiammoir later wrote of Anna’s astonishing commitment to her fellow players in the darkest hours of her life: “She never played with greater absorption, with more truth, with slyer or wickeder humour. Not once did she falter. When it was over and the curtain down she walked to the side of the stage and stood there for a moment smiling at us, her eyes dazzled as it seemed by the light, as though she had stepped out of a dark room”

Colm O’ Kelly was buried on the eleventh of April, 1956, in the Latin Cemetery of Alexandria. He was the great love of Anna’s life and she was never to marry again. But if something of Anna’s essence was interred with Colm that day, it is certain also, that something of his bright spirit entered Anna’s soul and that it remained with her to the end. Deprived of Colm’s love and companionship – and perhaps of the blessing of children – Anna, for the rest of her long life, was to find refuge and sanctuary, home and family in the theatre.

Time doesn’t allow for a proper acknowledgment here of her extraordinary career but it is fair to say that in that wonderful Irish phrase, ‘she saw the two days’. Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, periods of enforced ‘resting’ were balanced with the creation of a series of memorable roles in film, television and theatre. Not the least of these were in collaboration with her lifelong friend and comrade in arms, the inimitable Phyllis Ryan, whose contribution to Irish Theatre and to Anna’s career can never be overestimated.

Anna also held a special place in the hearts of many of our writers – not least John B. Keane who wrote the title role of Big Maggie for her in the late Sixties. Anna eventually played the role to wide acclaim but was unavailable for the first production for the very good reason that when it opened she was starring on Broadway in Brian Friel’s Lovers for which she received a Tony Award nomination in 1968. As everyone knows, Anna was to wait thirty years for a return to Broadway. But if that return was a long time coming it was worth waiting for and this time she went all the way, winning the Tony Award for her unforgettable portrayal of Mag Folan in Garry Hynes’ production of Martin McDonagh’s magnificent play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

Anna rejoiced, as we did, in her success. And we rejoiced principally because the scale of acclaim she found relatively late in life was so hard earned. And if her Tony Award was due recognition for a particular performance, I like to think that it was also a fitting acknowledgment of all her work and, in particular, an acknowledgment that, like so many of her fellow actors, she was there for the long road and she hung on in there through thick and thin.

I’ve had the privilege of Anna’s friendship for a lot less time than so many of you. When a few of us set up Red Kettle Theatre Company in her native city back in 1985, I was of course aware that Anna had been forced to go away to ply her trade. I looked forward to the day I could entice her back and did so eventually by writing a part for her in a new play, The Guernica Hotel. The role was that of an ageing but spirited actress who had seen better days, and if the truth is known, it was written, not just for Anna but in part about her. Anna wasn’t well at the time but graciously accepted my offer and, as always, played a blinder. The following year, she returned to Waterford to create the title role in Bernard Farrell’s magical new play, Happy Birthday Dear Alice. The story of a family preparing to consign their mother to a nursing home, I am certain that Anna’s commitment to her role was deepened by the play’s passionate defence and affirmation of the lives of our older people – a cause which, as the world and Mary Harney knows, Anna herself took on with such unstinting devotion in the last years of her life. Anna revelled in the role of Alice in Bernard’s play and I will always treasure the memory of her leading our predominantly senior citizen preview audience in a joyful and life affirming rendition of the play’s theme song, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. Anna’s contribution to the success of that production and to the success of Red Kettle was immeasurable and, in turn, I like to think that the play did much to restore Anna to her rightful place in Irish theatre.

In her passing, we are consoled by the knowledge that that place is secure and will endure with the passing of the years. It’s been a long and glorious journey from that mirror in Lombard Street to the dizzy heights of Broadway but she would want me to say that she never forgot where and whom she came from and that she always kept the streets and the people of Waterford in her mind’s eye and in a special corner of her heart. I spoke to her on the morning after her Tony Award and all she wanted to know was ‘what they were saying at home.’ The granting of the Freedom of the City meant as much to her as her treasured Tony Award. She accepted it from her fellow citizens on behalf of all the Manahan family who had gone before her and shared it especially with her brothers, Joe and Val and her cat, Girlie, to all three of whom she was completely devoted.

As Father Bernard has said, Anna was a deeply religious woman, who considered her prodigious talent to be a gift from God. She believed that with that talent came enormous responsibility and for this reason she placed herself at the disposal of so many disparate and sometimes desperate causes. In recent years, she has, as you know, been an eloquent, angry and fiercely passionate voice for our senior citizens and she would have been enormously moved by the Sacred Heart Active Retirement Group’s Guard of Honour as she entered the Church last evening.

For all her virtues, Anna was no saint and she wouldn’t want me kidding you on that score. Like many of you and especially those who had the nerve to direct her, I crossed swords with her more than once and have the scars to prove it. She was possessed, if the truth be said, of an enormous ego, But if that ego occasionally grated, I have often had cause to remind myself that it was this same ego which protected her in the very many dark days of her career when work was scarce and the phone wasn’t ringing and the only thing you could cling to was self belief. If Anna was, as the Yanks put it, high maintenance, there was a standing army that were constantly in her service and at the risk of forgetting someone I think she would want me to name them. There was Val and Joe, Des and Mona, Denise and Elfrieda. There was Catherine and Terry and Phyllis and Goula. There was Maureen and Eleanor, there was Father Bernard and Harvey. And of course, there was Anthony – Anna’s minder, enforcer, confidant and loyal friend. If Anna sometimes tried their patience, all of them kept the faith. And with good reason. They kept the faith because she was worth it. They kept the faith because they loved her. Just like we all did and just like we always will.

And you know, for all that ego, isn’t it ironic that when asked what she would like to be written as her epitaph, Anna replied – who knows in jest or in earnest – that it should contain just three words: “She muddled through”.

Be assured, Anna, from all of us, you did a lot more than that, darling.”