MACLIAMMIR, MICHEL

born Oct. 25, 1899, Cork, County Cork, Ire. died March 6, 1978, Dublin actor, scenic designer, and playwright whose nearly 300 productions in Gaelic and English at the Gate Theatre in Dublin enriched the Irish Renaissance by internationalizing the generally parochial Irish theatre. Using the stage name Alfred Willmore, MacLiammir made his debut on the London stage in 1911 playing Oliver Twist; he later played John Darling in Peter Pan. He traveled and studied art throughout Europe but returned to Ireland and in 1928 cofounded the Gate Theatre with the English producer Hilton Edwards. Their policy of presenting a mainly international repertoire, while also encouraging Irish playwrights to write plays less local in colour than those produced at the Abbey Theatre, enabled Irish audiences to become familiar with the plays of Aeschylus, William Shakespeare, Molire, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Eugene O'Neill, and Arthur Miller and called attention to such new Irish dramatists as Denis Johnston and T.C. Murray. Also with Edwards, MacLiammir organized the Galway Theatre (Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe) in 1928 and acted as its director from 1928 to 1931. There MacLiammir's Diarmuid agus Grinne (1928), a verse-play version, in Gaelic, of a Celtic myth about two famous lovers, was first produced. Throughout the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, MacLiammir periodically toured as an actor, producer, and director of a repertory company that appeared in such diverse locations as Cairo, Athens, and the major cities of Canada. MacLiammir also played Iago in Orson Welles's film version of Othello (1955). He developed and performed several one-man shows, including The Importance of Being Oscar (1960), based on the works of Oscar Wilde, and Talking About Yeats (1970), centred on the writings of William Butler Yeats.