Justin Edwards Stars in New Acclaimed Hit, The Ferryman

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with actor Justin Edwards of Broadway's acclaimed hit, "The Ferryman."

2/4/19 #2202

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"That sounds like a lot of fun. It looks like a lot of fun. That was from The Ferryman. This is Justin Edwards. He is in The Ferryman. It is at the Bernard Jacobs Theater? That's correct. On West 45th Street? And you play Tom Kettle? I do. Yes. Who is Tom? Tom is oddly the only English person in the play. Everyone else in the cast, and in the show, is from Northern Ireland. It's set in Northern Ireland in the 80s, and I'm the sole... 1981? Right? 1981, yeah. And I'm the sole English voice that you hear. Which confuses some people because I come out and they think, "He just can't..." Who are all these kids? "...can't do the accent." They're the family. There's a sc... there are... the main sort of couple that drive the show. Quinn Carney and his wife and his sister and all, all live together. And they have seven children ranging in age from 15 to, I think, he's supposed to be nine months? No, six months old. The baby. So seven kids. And then they have two cousins that come and join them as well. Plus I live there. Plus two aunts and uncles that live in... they're very busy. What about the animals? A very busy household. And we have rabbits and a goose. They're not live? They're real. Yes. I get to play with all the animals. Animals? I bring the goose on. And the rabbits... How does that work? It's... they're very well trained. We have Bill who's really sort of the foremost, Broadway animal trainers. And they've trained the... trained the goose up from birth to be happy around... What? Happy around humans. We had a slightly less compliant goose in the London run. It was a little more... they're quite fierce. And I don't know if you've ever held a goose. How big is that goose? Ah, oh I shouldn't have done that. It's about, you know... And you have to hold it? ...it's a decent size. Yeah. Like... but she's very... whatever, I trained. I can just pick her up, I tuck her under my arm and she attacks my face. But she's pretty good, and seems to be... So the story itself? Mm hmm. It's called the Troubles? Yeah. It's set, well... In Ireland? Yeah. So play that out. And so it's... 1981 was the height of the Troubles and the height of the hunger strikes in Ireland. And a lot of the Irish Republican Army - the IRA prisoners - were on hunger strike to raise awareness of their cause, and fighting in that way. So it was a very difficult time within Northern Ireland. And I remember it in a slightly different way, because I was sort of nine-ten years old and I was on the other side. I was..."