Travelling around the world in stages

Sinead Cusack as the self-centred Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard. Photo / Supplied

Ever since Sinead Cusack was a little girl, she has wanted to explore New Zealand. Now the Dublin-based actor finally has the chance to discover if her childhood vision measures up to reality when she travels to Auckland next week as part of The Bridge Project.

"When we were doing geography at school in Ireland, we were told that our polar opposite if you dug your way straight down through the world would be New Zealand," she says. "It's probably a load of nonsense but I've always wanted to go there."

Transatlantic theatre company The Bridge Project's staging of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale at the Aotea Centre from next weekend is an ambitious attempt to foster co-operation between the British and American theatrical communities. The cast, which also includes Simon Russell Beale, Ethan Hawke and Rebecca Hall, is evenly divided between the two countries. However, according to Cusack, it has much in common with most other such groups.

"It might look different from the outside because it's a rarity that a production originates with a mixture of American, English, Irish and Canadian actors," she says. "From a logistical and practical point of view, it's massive and involves extremely delicate negotiations between the unions and the various theatres. But as a constituency, we actors are always playing with various nationalities. Those sort of differences don't seem like differences because that sort of border mentality doesn't exist in our profession."

The Bridge Project marks a return to theatre for director Sam Mendes, who ran the Donmar Warehouse in London for a decade before helming films like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road.

"I've known Sam since he was about 21 when I saw a production he did in Cambridge but I've never worked with him," says Cusack. "He creates a kind of collegial atmosphere where everyone from the leading players to the understudy and the stage management team are allowed to contribute their ideas and thoughts. I like that but it is intimidating because you're not working privately in tiny little groups with the director. You're working together as a group, watching, judging and supporting each other."

The daughter of Maureen and Cyril Cusack, the 61-year-old is a member of Ireland's leading thespian dynasty, which includes her sisters Niamh, Sorcha and Catherine. Since making her debut at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in the late 1960s, she has divided her time between the stage and cinema, touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company and starring in films like V for Vendetta and Eastern Promises. However, she believes there is no comparison between the two mediums.

"Acting is acting," she says. "That's the skill we have; it's like carpentry. But as far as enjoyment goes, when you're on a stage you completely inhabit the character and the situation. You have an instant response to everything you do in front of the audience and you can ride on the wave that comes from them in a way that you can never do in film."

Cusack is intrigued by the contrast between Paulina, whom she plays in The Winter's Tale, and Madame Ranevskaya, her role in The Cherry Orchard.

"Paulina has a moral centre," she reasons. "She's a woman of integrity and courage, who is determined there can be redemption and forgiveness through pain. On the other hand, Madame Ranevskaya lives in a bubble of carelessness and privilege. She's somebody who operates only according to her own emotional needs. She's completely self-centred, thoughtlessly cruel and has no moral integrity although she can be warm and funny."

With its references to excessive wealth, The Cherry Orchard is very much a play for these troubled times. "It's mind-blowing how appropriate it is right now," says Cusack. "Chekhov wrote the play in 1904, a year before the first Russian Revolution, which he saw coming. Look at today's world and you see these bankers who have brought us down so low with their greed and complete disregard for those who are making the goods. They're making money out of money and destroying entire economies."

Written around 1623, The Winter's Tale has garnered a reputation as one of Shakespeare's problem plays because of its intense psychological drama and its combination of comedy and romance. "I don't see it in that light," says Cusack. "The unfounded jealousy of Leontes could be a difficulty but it is a trip switch that exists in all our brains. We can all trip over into that kind of madness very easily."

The differences between the two very different societies that the play takes place in can also prove jarring but according to Cusack that disparity lies at the heart of the play.

"Sicilia is a world where the divine right of kings operates. No matter how outrageous the behaviour of the tyrannical monarch, his word is law and you don't disagree with it. Then you have Bohemia, where it's not that the rules don't exist but they're a far more tolerant, loving and flexible set of rules."

After a season in New York, The Bridge Project has travelled to Singapore before arriving in New Zealand and will eventually take up residence in London.

"I toured Europe and America with the RSC doing Much Ado About Nothing and it was fascinating playing to the different audiences," says Cusack. "The dynamic changed from city to city in terms of how it affected the play and I was constantly astonished by that exchange that happens between the audience and the players."

Performance

What: The Bridge Project: The Cherry Orchard
Where and when: Aotea Centre, April 4-5

What: The Bridge Project: The Winter's Tale
Where and when: Aotea Centre, April 8-12

Sinead Cusack

Born County Dublin, Ireland, 1948. Joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 1975. Married actor Jeremy Irons 1978, with whom she has two sons. Respected stage actor whose film and TV roles include Waterland, Stealing Beauty, North and South, V For Vendetta, Eastern Promises.