Aedin Moloney (Morag), left, and Barrie Kreinik (Fiona) in
“When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout.”
PHOTO BY CAROL ROSEGG
By Orla O’Sullivan
Aedín Moloney starts to cry when asked about her company’s latest play being selected for the first time as a New York Times’ Critic’s Pick and her own performance in the ongoing production having being singled out for favorable mention.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but it’s such a validation, I’ve worked so hard for so long. I have no children, this is my child.”
This is Fallen Angel, the firm Moloney founded in 2003 to produce plays by and about women from Ireland and Britain.
The latest by Scotswoman Sharman Macdonald (who is Keira Knightley’s mother) runs on Theatre Row just until May 8. “When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout,” addresses a mother-daughter relationship and intergenerational women’s relationships more broadly, taking as its setting two, 50-something women on holidays with the 30something daughter of one of them.
It has a score by Moloney’s father, Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains in what is now one of several professional collaborations between them.
Moloney junior was still acting in “Women Without Men,” a Mint Theatre Company revival this spring of a 1938 work by Irishwoman Hazel Ellis, as rehearsals began for Fallen Angel’s current production.
Asked why she picked Macdonald’s 1984 play for Fallen Angel’s first production in two years, Moloney said, in part the era spoke to both herself and director John Keating, since “We started our adult lives in the late ‘80.” The pair began a professional collaboration in New York more than 20 years ago and Keating, from Cashel, Co. Tipperary, has directed all of Fallen Angel’s plays.
Beyond that, Moloney said, the current production fits within Fallen Angel’s style, elements of which, she said, include plays that eschew romanticism and have “an individual tone;” that emphasizes “humor, even in times of crisis;” that are “physical” and “beautifully written.” And these are presented with her definite sense that sets should be minimal with “very clean lines” (Moloney praises Jessica Kasprisin’s “uncluttered” work on the latest).
That’s on top of addressing the shared female experience and, though it is voiced in an Irish or British accent, seeking to express what is universal.
Additionally, Moloney said, “None of our plays are romanticized, they’re very real. We don’t do plays that are tied up in a little ribbon at the end.”
Moloney would love to see “When I Was A Girl” get another run—perhaps as a co-production—when this short slot closes at the Clurman Theatre. The company’s last play, “Airswimming,” was a co-production with the Irish Repertory Theatre.
The actor-producer, maybe best known for her Molly Bloom soliloquy, has two other immediate professional goals: to stage a festival of one-act plays by new women writers and to direct.
“I’ve been working up to that,” she said of directing.
As for the one-act festival, it was conceived before Waking The Feminists started in Ireland last November. Moloney said, “I’ve only had one Irish woman submit a play this year.” Meanwhile, she hears from British women “all the time.”
Calling mná na hÉireann…
“When I Was A Girl I Used to Scream and Shout,” is playing at the Clurman Theatre, West 42nd Street until May 8.
