‘This is the show I'd want to leave as my headstone’
Since leaving Cork as a young man, actor, and now writer, Jack Walsh has led a colourful and interesting life.
The Ballinlough native, known to many for his role as Jimmy Bourke in 'Killinaskully', has enjoyed a career spanning TV, film, and theatre. His screen roles include Dublin crime series ‘Kin’, drama series ‘Vikings: Valhalla’, and an appearance in the film ‘The Northman’ starring Hollywood heavyweights Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe.
He also played Pete Flanagan for 12 episodes in 'Fair City'.
This week, Walsh is bringing his new show ‘Welcome To Ireland - Meltdown of an Irish Tour Guide’ to the Cork Arts Theatre from 7-10 August.
Described best as a 70 minute whirlwind of 40 characters, including landlords, tourists, historical figures, and even a moonwalking squirrel, the show was born from Walsh’s own experience living in rented accommodation in Dublin. With acting not always being the most reliable source of income, Walsh was inspired to try his hand as a tour guide in an effort to make ends comfortably meet as rent prices continued to soar in Ireland and the fear of losing his home became very real.
“I used to live in this lovely house on Capel Street in Dublin over a Vietnamese café. I'd be looking out the window and I'd see these fellas walking by with umbrellas and 25 people and roaring a few words to them and then moving on, and I thought, sure maybe I could do that. Sure, he's only telling stories. That's what we do!” explains Walsh.
“There is a dichotomy between telling tourists the bright side and having anxiety yourself, and that's the fault line, that's where the theatre comes in.
“When you turn up at Dublin Port to take people off a cruise ship, 50 of them on a bus at six or seven in the morning, and you're knackered, and they're knackered. It's your job to make them happy immediately. You sing songs, you tell jokes. But you get great craic from those ones and they're the ones that end up being in the show,” adds Walsh.
So far, he says the show has been very well received as he’s brought it around the country, largely to do with the fact that Ireland’s housing crisis has impacted so many people in so many ways.
“Obviously, if people are sorted for a house and they've been sorted for a long time, it's a bit more other peoples' stories, but you see, the thing is, even people of my age and the previous generation who are sorted for a gaff – their children are in that category, they're in trouble. They're trying to figure out, how am I going to get my kids on the housing ladder?’ says Walsh.
“I played it for two weeks in the Viking Theatre in Clontarf. I was sort of wondering how it would go down because Clontarf is a fairly well-to-do area, you know? I thought, sure I'll be playing to more landlords than tenants out there!” he laughs.
“But they loved it! The word of mouth was tremendous.”
The new show goes all-in on political satire, a fact Walsh is especially proud of amidst a theatre landscape that he sees as being somewhat “safe” and unwilling to go after issues that might upset the “masters”.
“It makes it's point as well, and it's funny! It's satire. I don't just beat people over the head,” he explains.
“We have a long tradition of it. Remember Scrap Saturday way back in the '90s on the radio? They were forced off the radio because Fianna Fáil at the time didn't like the fact that they took the (urine) out of them. Ray Burke apparently threatened to cap the advertising revenue of RTÉ if they didn't stop them. So, that will show you how powerful it was.
“One of the reasons I wrote my show is that I was wondering why I hadn't seen more in theatre recently about the housing crisis. Maybe it's not cool to do political things because of who their masters are, but I don't care. If I was carried out by my boots today, this is the show I'd want to leave as my headstone,” adds Walsh.
As he prepares to bring his new show home to Leeside, Walsh says it’s always an emotional thing to come to Cork as memories of the young man he was before he left come rushing back.
“I love coming back to Cork because when I left Cork, I wasn't an actor,” says Walsh. “It's kind of strange because I remember the youngfella that I was, going to Roches Stores leisure shop and buying records back in those days, in the '70s. Going to see Rory Gallagher in City Hall.
“I moved up to Dublin a couple of years after I left school. I joined the bank. They used to only call it 'the bank' in those days.
They didn't even mention which bank because in those days, when you joined the bank you were sorted for life and you didn't need to think anymore, just walk in a straight line.
“I hated it and I thought, is this it? Is this life? I just knew there was something else in life, I just didn't know what it was.
“I met this girl from America. We were together for six months, had a great time, but then she moved on. I was sort of broken hearted and I remember I wanted to do evening courses to stop thinking about her when I'd finish work, so I did creative writing.”
These classes led Walsh to discover a talent for acting and a love for stage performance. He studied for a time at the Oscar School of Acting in Dublin and even studied mime with some artists over from Paris before heading to the French capital to study there.
“It led me astray, let me put it that way, and I ended up in rented accommodation when I was divorced later on in life, so I suppose the theme is; stay in the bank!” laughs Walsh.
“The moral of the story is do what your ma and your da say, stay in the bank, live a boring life and you'll be grand. But I didn't and I never regretted it.”