Word: bannen
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DIED. IAN BANNEN, 71, Oscar nominee who played an affable con man in 1998's hit Waking Ned Devine; in a car crash near Loch Ness, Scotland. In a 50-year career, Bannen appeared in Braveheart, Gandhi and the 1980 TV mini-series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and on the London stage in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night...
Having died of shock upon realizing that he holds a winning lottery ticket, poor Ned can't be awakened. But it occurs to scheming Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen) and his nervous pal Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) that he can be impersonated--at least long enough to fool the Dublin official who comes to Tully More (pop. 51) to verify Ned's claim. Eventually the whole village is in on the scam. To Jones' credit, the locals are not afflicted by the Irish curse--terminal whimsy--and his rendering of their sly cupidity as they grasp at good fortune...
Defense of the Realm follows Nick Mullen (Gabriel Byrne), an ambitious young reporter on a story that could make his career. A series of anonymous tips leads Mullen into a spate of stories linking Dennis Markham (Ian Bannen), a prominent Labor Party member of Parliament, to a communist spy ring. The stories--racy Fleet Street stuff filled with call girls and foreign agents--first destroy Markham's marriage, then his career as he is forced to resign his office...
...prolonged dying fall. He could seem like a drunk at a party who makes the other guests linger while he tries to find the point of a tale that is too long in the telling. But in recounting how Josie Hogan (Kate Nelligan) and James Tyrone Jr. (Ian Bannen) live out their 18-hour love affair (all the way from reluctant acknowledgment that it exists to equally reluctant renunciations), O'Neill created one of his most moving statements about how reality and dreams betray each other...
...energetic and often surprisingly humorous conception of the play. She is ably supported by grand, goatish Jerome Kilty as her ever scheming father, and there is an atmosphere of stark eloquence in Brien Vahey's set and in Marc B. Weiss's subtle lighting. Only Bannen lets down the side. He is an intelligent actor, but he never finds the fire in the ashes of his character. What should have been a duet is, as a result, too often an aria. But perfectly sung...