How Cillian Murphy went from Disco Pigs to brink of Oscars immortality

IN the play Disco Pigs, the characters Runt and Pig use a coded language, their own unique Cork vernacular. But instead of referring to their home place as Cork City they re-christen it Pork City.

The play by Enda Walsh launched Cillian Murphy’s acting career. With the success of the film Oppenheimer, and with Murphy widely tipped to win an Oscar for that role on Sunday night, there is fresh interest in his home-place. A new light is shining on Pork City.

Douglas-born Murphy has achieved global superstardom with the blockbuster Oppenheimer, already picking up a Golden Globe and Bafta. So in light of this, it is understandable that we transpose ourselves back to the Triskel Arts Centre in 1996, and the Corcadorca premiere production of Disco Pigs, which also featured Eileen Walsh and was directed by Pat Kiernan.

Who knew? Who knew that the two actors in the play would be, nearly 30 years later, two of the most vital talents on stage and screen?

Walsh delivered an acclaimed performance this year in Marina Carr’s play Girl On The Altar at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. She won New York’s Tribeca Festival Award in 2008 for her lead turn in the film Eden. In 2017, she appeared with Emma Thompson in The Children Act.

Murphy’s role in the TV series Peaky Blinders made him a household name, but his performance as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer has shot him into the Hollywood stratosphere, should he wish to reside in that heady place.

Given his legendary reticence regarding the business of fame and celebrity, that is far from being a certainty. But the Christopher Nolan film has made him a hot property and future acting assignments could bring him a level of industry status and personal wealth he could not have conceived of back in 1996.

Murphy’s route to where he is today was through the stage. Two parts in particular after Disco Pigs caught attention and gave an indicator of the brooding containment he would bring so effectively to the screen.

In Gary Hynes’ 1999 production of Sean O’Casey’s Juno And The Paycock at the Gaiety in Dublin, Murphy had to hold his own as Johnny Boyle against the magisterial Michael Gambon as his father, the Tony Award-winning Marie Mullen as his mother, and a legendary Joxer Daly by John Kavanagh.

The Corkman’s understated performance captured the haunted guilt of the Republican soldier who has ratted on his own side to the Free State. Murphy’s eyes radiated terror in the awareness that Johnny was doomed.

Those eyes again would haunt in the Gate Theatre Dublin’s production of Neil LaBute’s play The Shape Of Things in 2002. As an art student effectively hoodwinked by his artist girlfriend, played by Flora Montgomery, who proceeds to mould him into her newest artistic creation, he registered mute devastation at the level of deceit wielded on him.

LaBute has a connection with Cork. In 2005, the Everyman staged the world premiere of his play Wrecks, starring Ed Harris, whose dominant screen presence is his hypnotic blue eyes. For instance, see his scenes in David Cronenberg’s masterly The History Of Violence.

It is a quality Murphy shares: an innate understanding that, where the camera is concerned, less is more and the eyes eloquently convey the inner workings of a character’s mind. His performance in Oppenheimer is filled with examples.

Disco Pigs, on the other hand, is a frenetic piece of physical theatre which showcased the astonishing range of a young, inexperienced Murphy. It led him to forge a dynamic working relationship with playwright Walsh, one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from Irish theatre in the last 30 years.

Murphy would go on to appear in two other Walsh titles: the explosive solo play Misterman (2011) in which the lead character inhabits a jagged, surreal enclosed world, and Ballyturk (2014), a different riff on a similar theme that co-starred Stephen Rea and Mikel Murfi. These performances would remind us that the bottomless broodiness Murphy oozes on screen can be in inverse proportion to the violent intensity he achieves on stage.

No Cork actor had ever been nominated for an Oscar until now. Only two Irish-born actors have won one: Barry Fitzgerald for Going My Way (1944) and Brenda Fricker for My Left Foot (1989). Daniel Day Lewis, an Irish citizen, has won three Best Actor Oscars, for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012).

Murphy will be in stellar company on Sunday night. Other contenders are Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Colman Domingo for Rustin, Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers. and Jeffrey Wright for American Fiction.

With his enhanced profile, Murphy formed his own production company, Big Things Films. A book he optioned film rights for immediately was, ironically, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, author of the novella Foster, which formed the basis for the film An Cailin Ciuin. Small Things Like These will be released in 2024. To do the script, Murphy enlisted his old friend and collaborator, Enda Walsh.

Back to Pork City.