Cork actor: Panto? It’s a job with tinsel all over it!

CORK actor Cormac Costello, not long back from Australia where he lived for the last 14 years, says he is the envy of his Antipodean actor friends because of his role in pantomime.

There isn’t a tradition of pantomime in Australia, but for Cormac, who is gracing the stage of the Everyman in this year’s CADA Performing Arts production of Beauty And The Beast as Cogsworth, panto season means reasonably well-paid steady work into the middle of January. It is not to be sniffed at.

“For actors in Ireland, panto is prized, not just for the fun but also for having a decent wage coming in,” says Cormac.

If there’s a downside for him, it’s being back in Ireland in bad weather.

Cormac and his partner, Anastasia and their daughter Molly, normally spend Christmas in the sun. When he first went to Australia, Cormac spent a couple of Christmases on the beach, enjoying barbecues. But in more recent years, he has celebrated the big day in Anastasia’s parents’ home in Sydney.

“Anastasia’s mum is an absolutely cracking cook. She cooks for two days and we eat ourselves into a coma. I had carte blanche to fall asleep on the couch. It wasn’t turkey, more Greek cuisine as Anastasia and her family are Greek Australian. We’d have lamb kebabs and roast pork and maybe roast lamb.”

Cormac’s role in the panto is that of chief steward (or major-domo) in a big house.

“It’s my first non-baddie role in panto. The baddie parts are probably the most fun roles. You can really let rip and be really mean. I’ve enjoyed that down through the years. Now I have to lean into my nice side. In the Disney movie version of Beauty And The Beast,’ my character is turned into a clock.

In the panto, I’m still a clock but renamed ‘Shandon’ to Cork it up a bit. At the end, everybody gets changed back into their human form.

While working in pantomime is very welcome for a jobbing actor, is it hard to have to work during the Christmas holidays?

“I don’t mind it at all. You still get enough time to hang with the family. It’s really a joy because being in panto has such a Christmassy vibe. It never feels like a job that takes me away from Christmas. It’s actually the other way round. You’re doing a job that has tinsel all over it.”

Cormac and his family left Sydney for Cork during the summer. When Molly, 22, was aged eight and moved to Australia with her parents, she was “pure Cork” having been born here. “Now, she’s pure Aussie. She’s with us in Cork at the moment. She’ll probably head back to Australia before Christmas.

“She spent the whole of the year travelling, much to my iration and envy. She has a B Commerce degree in marketing.”

Cormac, 59, has always kept his toe in the acting world but has worked at more steady jobs in Australia. He has worked with an NGO in community mental health and for the last five years, he worked in the homeless sector in Sydney.

“That sector has grown around the needs of the homeless. I was working at the end point, ing rough sleepers. These people had come to a stage in their lives where the street is their home. There’s a lot of contributing reasons for somebody to end up on the streets, a lot of complex people with complex needs. But at least the sector there is quite comprehensive.

Even though it lacked some housing stock, when we met somebody on the street on our patrols, we’d probably get them housed in about six months.

That sounds a lot better than the plight of the homeless here.

“I don’t have first-hand experience of the sector here, but I sense from what people tell me that it’s a tougher scene. You won’t get a rough sleeper in permanent housing in six months. You don’t have to be Einstein to walk down the street and to know it’s tough.

“Growing up in Cork, I wouldn’t have seen the amount of people sleeping in doorways that I see now.”

When Cormac first left his native city for Australia, he committed himself to try and make a living out of acting there. After about four years, he left.

“It was the end of a relationship I had been in. Just before I left for home, I met Anastasia. There were a lot of phone calls between Ireland and Australia. Eventually, I persuaded Anastasia to come over here. She stayed for ten years. Then there was the quid pro quo. We went back to Australia in 2009, supposedly for a year. But the best laid plans of mice and men... Then we got jobs. Molly was in school. It was a bad time to move back. It never seemed to be the right time.

“One year turned to 13. It’s not like I was crying into my pillow every night. I’m immensely aware of how lucky I am. I have two ports from two great countries.”

Cormac first met Anastasia when she was teaching drama to people with intellectual disabilities.

I was working in a ed accommodation project. Because I was known to be an actor, I was dragged in as a kind of consultant. That’s how I met Anastasia.

The couple finally felt that moving back to Cork was a good idea.

“Molly had done a lovely European tour, as many Australians of her age do. We were missing Cork where we have a house which we rented out. We didn’t buy a house in Australia. So we were at the whim of landlords. You come back and you see the rental crisis and people really struggling to find a place. You can’t help but feel ‘aren’t we lucky to have our own place?’ So there’s an ongoing sense of ‘thanks be to God’ for having done something sensible.”

Cormac says the acting scene in Cork has changed since he last worked here.

“Some of the names that would have been around when I left are gone. Corcadorca took its last bow this year. Graffiti Theatre is still around but I suppose there has been a change of the old guard with new artistic directors at the Everyman and the Opera House.”

About seven years ago, Cormac was “juggling acting with other work like a lot actors do. I was working in independent theatre. While Sydney is a city of over five million people, there’s only three or four theatre companies that pay a decent wage. You have a richer theatre scene in Dublin, despite Sydney being much bigger. You’re more likely to be making a living as an actor in Australia from screen work. When that does come in, it pays well.”

Cormac has done a fair bit of screen work in Australia. Now that he is back in Cork, he is looking around to see what opportunities are there. But he has no immediate plans for 2024 yet. First, there is panto season to be enjoyed – all the way into mid-January. It’s hard to look too far ahead in the acting game.

Beauty And The Beast is at the Everyman from December 2 to January 14 2024. Bookings on https://everymancork.com/