Nettie Sheridan admits she’s definitely a fangirl when it comes to Martin McDonagh – and it’s definitely an ambition fulfilled as she directs one of his plays for the Southwick Players. The Beauty Queen of Leenane will be at the Barn Theatre, Southwick from April 9-12.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers, lovely
00:06to speak to Nettie Sheridan, and, well, you are a fangirl for this particular playwright
00:11and you are doing his first play, The Beauty Queen of Lunan. What is so special about this
00:18playwright, Martin, how do we pronounce his surname, Martin McDonagh?
00:22McDonagh, yeah. I think either way.
00:25What is so special about him then, that you love so much about his writing, that you
00:29call yourself a fangirl?
00:31I'm total, I'm total Martin McDonagh fangirl. So, the way that he writes is clever, the
00:39characters are so beautifully, beautifully well written, and they pose quite a lot of
00:46challenge for actors and directors, I think, to be able to stage these and have exactly
00:53the right temperature, feeling, emotion, to gain the exact correct audience impact that
01:04you want. They tend to have a bit of a journey for each character, it doesn't matter how
01:10small it is, they all have their own individual journey, and their own individual impact.
01:19It's a real treasure of mine to be able to take one of these amazing stories.
01:27And you'd been wanting to do one for a while, and your logic was, you ought to start with the
01:31first one.
01:32Yeah, so yeah, the first one, it's part of a trilogy of plays, the first part of a trilogy
01:37of plays, and his first play, which was written in the 90s. I think it was first debuted in 1996.
01:45So, I think that it kind of made sense to go back to Madonna's roots, really. But I was,
01:51I fangirled, really, from In Bruges, the film, and that's when I first started to
01:56investigate Martin McDonagh's work.
01:58So, as a fangirl, does that make it more difficult for you? Does that heap up the
02:03pressure rather than having a bit of a detachment?
02:05Oh, God, yeah. I mean, honestly, obviously he doesn't know me. I'm just some random
02:14from Southwick. But I do feel like, because I've seen things of his on stage, The Pillar
02:21Man, and Very, Very, Very Dark Matter. They're just incredible. The stuff is incredible.
02:28And the plays that he writes, when you read them, just incredible. The films that he makes.
02:33So, obviously, when you take on something like this, there's a huge amount of pressure. I don't
02:37think there's been anything that he's done that has, you know, every director at some point has
02:43to have a flop, right? But I don't think he has anything.
02:47But the other context is the context of Southwick plays. This is something that is actually
02:51genuinely a bit different, isn't it? You were saying you could have chosen a big floor filler,
02:56but you're going to challenge.
02:58Yeah, I know. I'm so grateful that Southwick, because the Barn Theatre, where Southwick
03:04stage everything, Southwick stage and stuff, is an amazing space. And to create this cottage
03:12in the hills of Connemara, to be able to make it feel claustrophobic, and to get the tension
03:23that you need, this stage and their set makers are just out of this world. And you can ask the
03:31most incredible things. I'm not going to say too much, but I've been quite demanding. And it's
03:37always been, yes, yes, yes, we can do that. Well, we can do that. We can do that. Okay.
03:42Brilliant. I mean, they're brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And I feel very, very honoured.
03:47I hope it's a huge success. It's Southwick Players, Beauty Queen of Linan. And it's at
03:53the Barn, as you say, from April the 9th to the 12th. Nettie, lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
03:59Thanks, Phil. Thank you.