The Stage

Actors take up herbal cigarettes

Published Monday 19 April 2004 at 17:10

Actors on stage and on TV and film sets in the Irish Republic have been forced to switch to herbal cigarettes following the government-imposed ban on workplace smoking.

Productions at three of Dublin’s main theatres - the Peacock, the Gate and the Olympia - have been affected by the recent law. The actors have been encouraged to smoke herbal cigarettes instead because the official ban relates only to tobacco.

Stuart Carolan’s new play at the Peacock, Defender of the Faith, requires that all four characters smoke. In order to circumvent the prohibition, director Wilson Milam ordered a variety of herbal cigarettes for the actors to try. “Nobody likes them, they’re vile,” he admitted. “Because they are so obnoxious, the actors will probably smoke a lot less during the play.”

Milam said that when a similar smoking ban was introduced in New York, theatres were given exemptions for artistic purposes. Auditoriums now have warning notices that characters smoke during performances, so that members of the audience who object can sit at the back. Smoking is essential to create atmosphere in some plays, he argued, citing The Odd Couple, Look Back in Anger and The Glass Menagerie.

The Gate Theatre, which is staging a new production of the Brian Friel hit Dancing at Lughnasa, has had to replace the Woodbines favoured by the character Maggie with a herbal brand. “It’s not a huge part of the play,” said a theatre spokeswoman, “but there are a couple of scenes where she does light up.”

The smoking ban has forced a change of stage directions in an Olympia Theatre production of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, an adaptation of the Roddy Doyle novel. Now, instead of lighting up as the curtain rises, the lead character fingers the cigarette for several minutes but never lights it. Actress Hilda Fay, who plays the role, recently gave up smoking and said she hoped the ban would help.

Fay also appears in RTE’s home-made soap Fair City, which has been hit by the ban, particularly filming in the Fair City local. It has applied to the Department of Health for a similar exemption to that granted to prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

However, a department spokesman said there was no prospect of that. “They don’t use real beer in the Fair City pub,” he pointed out, “so why do they have to use real cigarettes?”