In contrast, the Olivier-nominated McArdle has been a West End mainstay for more than a decade. A self-proclaimed “right wee show-off” given to performing speeches from A Streetcar Named Desire in his family’s living room as a child, he snuck down to London to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the age of 17, only to botch his lines. Instead of getting on the bus home, defeated, he charmed his way past a secretary and back into the assessment room. One plummy director memorably called him a “cheeky little bastard,” but he still won a place.
In the years since, McArdle has tackled some of the most formidable roles in the Western canon, from Chekhov’s Platonov at the National in 2016 to James I in Rona Munro’s The James Plays for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2014. Just before COVID hit, he had completed a run as the lead in David Hare’s reimagining of Peter Gynt, also at the National, which saw him onstage for three hours for each performance. It cemented his reputation as one of the West End’s most chameleonic actors—able to convey malevolence and relatability, lucidity and delusion in the space of an act.
But you’ll most likely know him from HBO’s hugely successful Mare of Easttown, in which he played murder suspect Deacon Mark Burton opposite Kate Winslet’s Detective Sheehan. Between that and Ammonite, “I feel like I’ve spent more time with Kate Winslet in the past few years than anyone else,” he says with a hoot. “She really, really makes me laugh. I turned 30 while filming Ammonite, and everyone bought me properly nice gifts—Saoirse got me an actual fossil, and Kate gave me a box covered with photos of her and Leonardo DiCaprio, which plays ‘My Heart Will Go On’ when you open it.” (It now has pride of place on his mantelpiece.) Still, he’s yet to watch Mare of Easttown. “I feel like me, my mum and my dad are the only people in the world who haven’t seen it,” he laughs. “They said to me the other day, ‘Everyone keeps telling us about this Handmaids of Eastwick.’ And I thought, ‘God, is that the title?’”
In spite of his recent televisual coup, the stage is where his heart lies. Through the canal-facing windows of the rowing club’s lounge, the weather is beginning to clear and his mind has turned, once more, to rehearsal prep—although neither he nor Ronan can quite believe that Macbeth’s opening night approaches at last. The pandemic casts a long shadow.
“What really struck me while reading Yaël’s draft is the scene where Lady Macbeth is washing her hands,” Ronan says, referring to her fabled attempts to wash off the imaginary blood of her victims (“Out, damned spot!”). “In the past, there’s been a separation between me as an audience member and this character who’s giving into ‘madness.’ Now, we’ve all had the limits of our minds tested by the pandemic.” McArdle agrees. “What Yaël calls ‘the play’s descent into hell’ is accessible now in ways that it never was before, which on the one hand is depressing,” he says, thoughtfully, “but on the other, where better to find catharsis than at the theatre?”
The Tragedy of Macbeth is at the Almeida Theatre in London from October 1.
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