I’m Gonna Be Your No.1

Pat Nolan 5MAR19

f course, referring to an actor who has worked for over 40 years in theatre, TV and blockbusters simply as yer man from Fair City is a cheap trick.

But, hey, if we hadn’t put a reference to the Irish soap in the subhead, half of you may not have actually swung by.

In a rather long and illustrious career, Pat Nolan has starred in such movies as Batman Begins and Angela’s Ashes, whilst beyond those years the Carrigstown cad Barry O’Halloran, on the small screen, there’s been the likes of The Magnificent Ambersons, Strumpet City and Honeymoon For One.

Most importantly, Nolan starred in The Most Ridiculous Irish Film Of All Time, the Pierce Brosnan-led, Bond-Does-Glenroe, brilliant mistake that is 1988’s Taffin.  – which just happens to have been shot around Greystones, Kilcoole and Wicklow Town.

Ultimately though, it’s the stage where Pat Nolan is truly at home, having made his theatre debut at the age of 14 in a youth club production of Philadelphia, Here I Come before a year in Vienna with an English theatre group sealed the teenage Bluebell boy’s fate. From Studs, Borstal Boy and Bouncers to I, Keano and Take Off Your Cornflakes, Pat Nolan has spent pretty much his entire adult life threading the boards.

Only, come Friday, March 22nd, Nolan will be working off-stage, directing Killian Filan and Ann Russell in Tara Maria Lovett’s acclaimed black comedy, The Tide. Telling the tale of two lonely souls meeting on a beach and quickly hatching a Hitchcockian plan to free themselves from their loveless lives, the humour here is in the wickedness of the duo’s evil plotting. The darker it gets, the funnier The Tide becomes.

We managed to catch up with Nolan just before the tide came in and engulfed us both down at The Cove today, to talk the perfect crime, the long career, and getting away from it all in Avoca…

You can catch The Tide at The Whale on Friday, March 22nd right about here.