‘IN Ireland, you wouldn’t know for certain someone liked you unless they took the piss out of you – I think that is a very Scottish trait as well,” says Janet Moran, co-star of award-winning show Heaven, which is returning to Scotland this week.
The play is set in a small town in the middle of Ireland dominated by the “three-headed monster” of Tesco, Aldi and Lidl supermarkets but although it is “very specifically an Irish play”, it has resonated with Scottish audiences, winning a Fringe First when it was first shown in Edinburgh in 2023.
“I think there are a lot of commonalities between Irish people and Scottish people,” said Moran, whose TV work includes Bafta-nominated The Dry.
“We are all Celts and share the closeness, the banter and taking the mick out of each other.”
Moran won an Irish Times Best Actress award for her performance in Heaven, which features a middleaged couple at a crossroads in their relationship and has been staged in New York and London as well as Ireland and Scotland.
“Their marriage is really lacking in some fundamental things like desire and honesty but what is really is remarkable to me, particularly in Edinburgh, is that the response here has been so emotional,” said Moran.
“I think what people really respond to is that you’re getting a kind of sneak look into the inner workings of people’s minds and it is also about that sort of middle-aged desire for more but you don’t quite know what you want more of.
“You may be feeling unfulfilled, maybe having settled and you’re looking towards the end of your life and thinking of grasping at more adventures.”
It sounds serious but Moran (below) says it’s very funny, with her co-star Andrew Bennett receiving rounds of applause for some of his gags.
“I’m very jealous,” she laughed.
“Andrew is in the Oscar-nominated film The Quiet Girl but in this he is a middle-aged, closeted gay man who really goes off the rails over the course of the play.
“The play has all these themes about desire and repressed sexuality and my character is a woman in her Irish dramedy ‘goes down a storm’ with Scottish audiences 50s who is at a crossroads in her life.
“At one point she says, ‘I want to get pissed now’ – there is a real element of danger in her and I think people like that.
They like seeing someone being a devil on stage and behaving the way she shouldn’t, especially a middle-aged woman.”
While Moran is delighted the play is “going down a storm” wherever it shows, she was less pleased when an audience member came up to her after one of the first performances in London and said it was refreshing to hear “older people” talking about sex.
“I said ‘older people – how dare you!’”
In the play, Moran’s character returns to her hometown but is a “bit sneery” when her sister gives her a tour and she finds nothing but supermarkets and vape and charity shops.
“I don’t know what it’s like in the towns in Scotland outside the main cities but in Ireland in the last few years, post the financial crash and because of austerity, there are a lot of shuttered shops even in Dublin,” she said.
“Once you get out to the small towns, my god, it really is just doughnut franchises and vape shops – that is all you have along with the three-headed monster of Tesco, Aldi and Lidl. It’s so sad because all the individuality of a place just gets knocked.”
Fans of The Dry will be pleased to know there is a new series planned but in the meantime, Moran is excited about playing in Edinburgh outwith the Fringe which she has appeared at 11 times, both in her own shows and in other productions.
“I’m looking forward to getting a sense of Edinburgh without all the madness,” she said. Heaven sold out in the Fringe run, even with extra shows added, and tickets are selling well for this week’s run at the Traverse Theatre.
“I think it really is a special piece as it kind of has everything in it and two actors are talking directly to the audience about the most private elements of the human experience,” said Moran.
“The reception to it has been unreal so it’s a great privilege for Andrew and me to be in it.
“I am not taking that lightly at all.”
Heaven is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, from Tuesday until March 1
