Eileen Walsh’s TV psychic Sheila Gold in York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
JEREMY Dyson and Andy Nyman’s world premiere of The Psychic is into its last week at York Theatre Royal, where lead actress Eileen Walsh and professional theatre newcomer Megan Placito have been enjoying every twist and turn of the writer-director duo’s psychological thriller.
Eileen is playing popular TV medium Sheila Gold, who loses a high-profile court case that brands her a charlatan, costing her not only her reputation but also a fortune in legal fees. When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, she senses an opportunity to bleed them for money. What follows makes her question everything she has ever believed, leading her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life.
Joining her on that journey is Megan’s Tara, Sheila’s ambitious, resolute niece, who combines vulnerability and underdog defiance with a determination to inherit her family’s fairground wisdom and tricks.
“I did a Zoom meeting with Jeremy and Andy two months before we started rehearsals after they’d seen my work and said, ‘Can we send you the script?’,” says Eileen. “I’d never done a play like this, but the lads were so enthusiastic about their subject, the magic and the jump scares that it was an easy ‘yes’ for me.”
Megan, who trained at ArtsEd, had appeared in the television series Father Brown, Casualty and Doctors and the films Peter Pan’s Neverland, Decode Me and The Salt Path, but not yet on stage when she was contacted by casting director Arthur Carrington.
“Jeremy and Andy had asked him, ‘can you find any girls from a showman background?’, and I was the first one they saw in January, after I was sent the script on my birthday in December – on the same day that my boyfriend bought me a book on witchcraft! It was like all these things were coming together,” says Megan.
“I’d done some indie films and the usual rites-of-passage TV shows, but I was desperate to do theatre, although Arts Ed was more focused on TV and film training, but all the performances that had captivated me had been on stage. Like seeing Eileen’s performance in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the National [Theatre], playing John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth.”
Megan met Jeremy and Andy at the Umbrella Rooms in Shaftsbury Avenue. “I was just wanting to rack their brains as I grew up in a travelling showman community in Chertsey in Surrey, who worked on fairgrounds,” she says.
“My mum is a showman and my father is a ‘joskin’ [a non-traveller], as she wanted to get out of the showman world, where, in a lot of the communities, there are pressures. But I had freedom, I went to a regular GCSE school, and when I said I wanted to be an actor, my mum said, ‘yeah, do it’. Showmanship is in my heart; it’s in my blood to perform.”
Megan Placito’s Tara in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
At her first meeting with Jeremy and Andy, Megan was “asking them about the language in the play, and how they’d written about a matriarchal world when it’s called ‘showman’ – though actually the community is run by the women.”
Eileen was drawn to Dyson and Nyman’s fascination with the powers of psychics. “The way the guys spoke about ‘reading people’ intrigued me,” she says.
“I’d just done a show called The Second Woman with an Australian company at Cork Opera House, when it was an opportunity to see how I could hold up for 24 hours, playing the same scene 100 times opposite 100 men, so I felt it was moving in the right direction for me to come out and talk with a live audience straightaway in The Psychic.
“It was not something scary for me to deal with, bringing the audience on a journey into the play through direct address.”
Eileen continues: “It’s really interesting to give people in the audience the chance to talk if they fill out the ‘share card’: they’ll share their stories, share eye contact with you, and it’s amazing how many people will share intimate details about themselves.
“I love the bravery that it takes for them to do that, standing up in front of the audience, who actually become the eighth character in the play.”
York Theatre Royal is running a 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds, where they can acquire two tickets for £15 each. “People in that age group should see The Psychic because it’s on-trend with TikTok and Tarot card reading, and so many people are interested in spiritualism, ‘the other’ and ‘manifesting’,” says Megan.
“I do think that people will enjoy that side of it: the question of whether any of it is real or unreal. There’s so much interest in ghost stories, and I love how it feels like a Victorian melodrama too.”
The Psychic, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Psychic: York Theatre Royal is offering 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds