““The Steward of Christendom’’ is the fifth in a cycle of plays about the ““lost [or] hidden’’ people in Barry’s own family. The part of Thomas Dunne is one of those roles that come along once in a career. Dunne was Barry’s great-grandfather, the last head of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the bastion of British rule in Ireland. As an Irish Catholic fighting for the British Empire in the years when the Irish Free State was being born in blood, Dunne was not on the honor roll of the Barry family. Barry imagines him at the age of 75 in the County Wicklow mental home, reliving his Lear-like relationship with his three daughters, who appear in his anguished visions, along with his son who died in the Great War. The great love of his life was not his wife, Cissy, but … Queen Victoria. ““It used to frighten me how much I loved her,’’ he recalls. ““Her mark was everywhere. Ireland, Africa, the Canadas, every blessed place. And men like me were there to make everything peaceable, to keep order in her kingdoms.''
Thomas could keep order neither in the kingdom nor in his life, whose broken pattern he is trying to reassemble in dreams and visions. As Thomas, McCann is a Lear in long johns, his skull shaven, his eyes haunted, huddled on an iron bed. Like Lear he fights madness: ““I must not speak to shadows,’’ he says. Barry makes this shadowspeak a lilting, gritty poetry that at times recalls Dylan Thomas. McCann utters these lyric, tragic and even mirthful arias with the varied textures of a master musician. ““Who is this guy?’’ said a spectator at intermission. ““He’s got to be the world’s greatest actor.''
This guy was briefly seen on Broadway last season in Brian Friel’s ““Wonderful Tennessee,’’ which closed almost instantly. It helps that he has an ego about one twentieth the size of a Hollywood bit player. He has in fact made a number of movies, including ““The Dead,’’ John Huston’s last film, and most recently Bernardo Bertolucci’s ““Stealing Beauty.’’ He’s done a lot of television in Ireland and England. But McCann is a stage animal. His father was ““a freelance, a politician, an actor, a journalist, a horseplayer,’’ says McCann, 53. ““He wrote eight comedies in eight years for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.''
McCann started out moonlighting in bit parts at the Abbey while working as a newspaper copy boy. ““I’d do my bit and run back to the paper,’’ says McCann. ““Then I played the cardinal of Uganda, a black man with an Oxbridge accent, and I got a good mention in my own paper. The editor called me in and said, “This can’t be you, can it?’ ’’ He became a full-time actor. At the Royal Shakespeare Company he played the sexy valet in Strindberg’s ““Miss Julie’’ opposite Helen Mirren. He teamed up with Peter O’Toole in ““Waiting for Godot.’’ Max Stafford-Clark, who directed ““The Steward of Christendom’’ brilliantly, says, ““Donal has preserved his purity. He hasn’t watered down his talent by doing bad plays and movies.''
McCann’s approach to acting reflects this purity. ““I just read endlessly before I memorize a line. What we call acting is sometimes just a way to disguise weaknesses in a play. With Sebastian Barry you don’t need to “act.’ I just let the logic of the role sink deep into me.’’ There was a time McCann was letting something else sink into him. ““I was drinking heavily. And I was rehearsing a play directed by Joe Dowling, and I showed up one day with many pints inside me. Joe took me aside and said, “Look, you can drink if you like. Or you can do this play.’ Our eyes met over a tense distance, and then I said, “Let’s do it’.’’ Engaged several times but never married, McCann tries to keep things simple. He calls Christianity ““desirable,’’ adding, ““Christianity is such a simple thing. The squabbling between churches is totally un-Christian. It’s like these sects are telling Saint Peter, “You take your orders from us. Don’t let that guy in’.’’ Playing Thomas Dunne has been an ordeal of faith as well as craft. Thinking of those actors who may follow him in the role, he grins and says: ““I strongly recommend prayer.''
