Mullingar actor makes West End debut in Juno

A 22-year-old who began his acting career on the stage of the arts centre in Mullingar is currently in his second major professional role, this time at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, in London’s West End.

Eimhin FitzGerald Doherty, who is from Lynn Avenue, is playing Johnny Boyle – one of the lead roles – in the Sean Casey play, Juno and The Paycock.

The play opened for a 70-show run at the start of October, and his performance comes straight after his participation in a US production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh.

Acting was an early passion for Eimhin, who spent four years at Wilson’s Hospital School and his final two at St Finian’s, all the while taking part in shows at Mullingar Arts Centre, and he is effusive in his praise of his experience there and of the contribution that Sean Lynch, in particular, made to his development as an actor.

“I started in the stage school, so the first show I did with The Student Players was Little Shop of Horrors when I was just turning 15 or 16 and from then on I don’t know if I missed a show: we did Legally Blonde and Chicago and Pride and Prejudice and Little Women and I was involved in the pantomime and everything,” says Eimhin.

“Sean Lynch was helpful and put me in everything: I was really, I was really looked after – any show. I was always given a good part and I was always up for it.”

The year 2019 was a significant one on the dramatic front in Mullingar: It was when the first professional production of The Valley of the Squinting Windows was staged – and for Eimhin, that proved a critical development.

“I was going into my Leaving Cert that year, and then I got to meet a lot of actors there who were working professionally and I was talking to a lot of people at that point. I think I knew I wanted to go on and study acting and they were all super supportive and really, really lovely.”

After the Leaving Cert, he applied for and secured one of the only 16 places available to study acting at the Lir Academy in Dublin, a conservatory for the dramatic arts affiliated with Trinity College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

The training at Lir was rigorous, involving long hours, intense practice, and for his final year, which he completed this summer, participation in five plays, a short film and a showcase. However, on account of securing his role in the Beauty Queen of Leenane, Evan was released early from college and allowed to have that marked as part of his final assessment.

He now has his BA in acting, although he’s going to miss the actual graduation ceremony next week, because it falls two days before the end of the run of Juno.

Eimhin is hugely positive about his Lir experience, saying it gave him his BA in acting and invaluable exposure to professional-level theatre, guided by top-tier directors. “The training is fantastic and we’ve had some really great people come out of there. It’s a fantastic drama school,” he says.

Just before heading to America, Evan did his first round audition for Juno and while in the US was sending home tapes and continuing to audition. They then followed a Zoom call with the director and a wait of about a week, anxiously hoping for good news. When the call came, it brought with it not just the word that he had got a part, but that it was a bigger part than he had expected: “I was originally up for a completely different part, I was up for Jerry in it and I got cast as Johnny, so that was a nice little surprise.”

There was just a gap of about two weeks between the end of the show in America and work starting on the play in London.

“It has been a real whirlwind,” says Eimhin, explaining that learning the script is just part of the process: the larger element was the five weeks of intense rehearsals, every day from about 10am until 6pm.

“Sometimes, if we were doing scenes that you’re not called in, you might have the afternoon off. But for the most part, for me anyway, since I have quite a substantial role, I was in an awful lot. And you know, you’re just working to try and find what works best.

“And really in that five weeks, what your goal is, as a company and with everybody, is to try to do everything that could possibly be done. And then from all of that trial and error, you just want to try to find the best combination of choices and actions and ways of saying things that create the most cohesive story and the most entertaining story and the most moving story.

“And that’s all it is: it’s all about the story and trying to find the best way to tell it.”

Eimhin admits that he loves not just being a part of the play but being part of the play in that particular theatre: “It’s a beautiful theatre, and it’s got so much history. There’s all these posters of shows that have gone on before. Judy Dench used to play there a lot, and Maggie Smith: we were all looking at the posters of productions that Maggie Smith was in, considering that she’s just passed.

“It used to be the place where John Gielgud would play a lot. So a lot of historically just phenomenal actors on that stage and the history is ripe in it.

“And then now I’m doing the show with Mark Rylance, who a lot of people would argue is the best theatre actor in the world right now. He’s got an abundance of awards and they’re really well-deserved. He’s really something special; he’s a really beautiful soul.

“And then also J Smith Cameron, who’s playing Juno, I mean, she’s as experienced as they come.”

Another of the lead roles – that of Jackson – is played by Paul Hilton, but all of the rest of the cast are Irish: “Ingrid Craigie is playing Mrs Tancred: she’s incredible. Anna Healy is somebody I watched all through drama school in various shows, and so it’s surreal to be working with her now. And Aisling Kearns (from Tullamore), who plays my sister. It’s just a beautiful combination of real Irish talent and it’s great to have that on a UK stage.”

Musicals

In Mullingar, Eimhin would, like most of the local young Thespians, have gained experience in musicals as well as straight acting, but his actual formal training has now been in straight acting. He says, he would always be interested in doing musical shows as well: “It’s definitely something that I’d be up for, you know, if the right role and the right job came my way, I’d definitely do it again because I love singing, and, you know, it was Angie Lynch in the arts centre that really got me started in that. When, I was 12 or 13, she put me in the choir in Mullingar. And from then, when I moved to Finian’s, I started getting lessons in singing and I spent a couple of years in Spirit Dance, Sarah Corrigan’s school: “I just wanted to get better at all those things, at singing and dancing and acting. And the arts centre really supported that, it gave me a chance to improve my craft, even at such a young age.

“Now I talk to so many professional actors I work with now, about the amateur theatre that we did coming up, and the sheer amount of shows that are put on in the arts centre in Mullingar – it’s second to none.”