Photo, Ros Kavanagh Seán McGinley stars in "Ages of the Moon."

By John Soltes / Editor in Chief

NEW YORK (Jan. 21, 2010) — Seán McGinley has performed works by O’Neill, Wilde, Shakespeare, Williams, Mamet and Synge. From Galway to Dublin, he’s graced a number of stages in his native country of Ireland, chiseling out character after character throughout his long and illustrious career. McGinley very much earns the designation of a veteran theater actor.

But this month, he is doing something different, something novel, something perhaps surprising: Seán McGinley will perform in New York City for the very first time.

“It’s very exciting to put it mildly,” McGinley said in a recent phone interview about his role in the new Sam Shepard play, “Ages of the Moon.” “It is fantastically exciting. I’ve found the audiences so far to be very generous.”

“Ages of the Moon” is a verbal and physical tussle between McGinley’s character of Byron and his best friend, Ames, played by Stephen Rea. Shepard, the veritable cowboy of the playwrighting world, wrote the 70-minute one act with both McGinley and Rea in mind.

The piece, very much unique yet very much in line with Shepard’s previous plays, takes place on the porch of a country house in the lost expanse of the American West. Ames has invited Byron over for a visit. The two, though best friends, haven’t seen each other in some time — let’s say many moons ago. The revelation of their present circumstances and the sordidness of their past relationships are brought into the cross-hairs. The end result for the two theatrical creations is revelation, whiskey, solace, one finicky overhead fan and a beautiful lunar eclipse.

“We started rehearsal January of last year in Dublin,” McGinley said of the play’s earlier incarnation at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland. Today, “Ages of the Moon” is set to open at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater on 20th Street in New York City and play through March 7.

With only two people in the cast, the actors seemingly hang onto the words of the playwright as if they were buoys. “Never have I been more aware that you have to be in a present tense,” McGinley said. “That’s the exciting thing. It requires very intense concentration. … The play itself is very challenging. It requires incredible precision and you have to know what you’re saying.”

The back-and-forth between Ames and Byron is often of the half-finished-sentence variety. Their language is one of reality, one of comfort. For McGinley, it’s a matter of following the words on the page: “It’s in the DNA of the writing. … The way Sam writes is very musical.”

Interestingly, the goings-on of “Ages of the Moon” can be viewed with a chuckle, a tear or, most probably, both. These are two men, foolish yet poignant, who live on the cusp of old age. They squabble over innocuous details, but in their trivialities, there is an achieved humanity — a “beautiful humanity” as McGinley said.

“(Shepard) doesn’t try to answer questions, he creates life.”

McGinley has seen the audiences change between Ireland and New York City. “It’s more funnier here than back home,” he said. “I think generally they seem to be laughing a lot more here.”


One obstacle for McGinley was learning the accent that Byron requires. “We were very lucky,” he said. “We had a world-class dialect coach in Ireland. … That’s something you need to get out of the way early on. You don’t want it to get in the way.”



The journey McGinley has been on with his fellow cast member will continue for a few more weeks, and even though he’s performed the play several times, there’s exploration every day. “It’s an ongoing process; it’s a very live, organic thing,” he said. “There’s never a day when we don’t find something new about the play.”

“Ages of the Moon” is currently playing the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater at 336 W. 20th St. in New York City. Visit www.atlantictheater.org for more information.