WHEN Fra Fee takes our call to discuss his current run in Brian Friel's classic play Translations at London's National Theatre, the Co Tyrone actor and musician is looking forward to something of a family reunion.
"I have a show this evening and three of my sisters have flown over from Belfast to watch me," enthuses Fee (32), who took over the role of Owen from fellow Irishman Colin Morgan last month: the Armagh-born actor won rave reviews last year alongside returning cast members Ciarán Hinds, Judith Roddy and Seamus O'Hara in the National's revival of Friel's language rich and persistently relevant tale about British colonialism and cultural imperialism in 19th century Ireland.
Happily, Fee is already impressing audiences and critics with his own take on Owen, an idealistic and enthusiastic young Co Donegal man who returns home as a translator of Irish place names for British military map makers before eventually rebelling against his employers in Friel's enduring 1980 work.
"It's all going very well and it's been received really well " says the London-based Dungannon-bred performer, a former student at St Patrick's Academy who cut his Thespian teeth with Dungannon's Bardic Theatre Co before studying music at the University of Manchester and Royal Academy of Music, prior to his big acting break in Tom Hooper's 2012 film adaptation of musical theatre staple Les Misérables.
"Obviously, Translations was a huge hit last year which is why it has come back. It's just a thrilling thing to be a part of.
"I'm one of five new cast members: the balance between half of the cast having done it last year and half of us being new brings a nice new energy to the production, which then changes the way the likes of Ciarán and co respond to what we're doing. So it feels very fresh.
"Also, whenever you put on anything, it's sort of reflecting its surroundings in terms of what's happening in society in general. With all this talk of borders and identity and sense of place, it just seems extremely relevant to be doing it now – even moreso than when they put it on a year-and-a-half ago.
"It feels like a nice antidote to the very very confusing times that we're living in at the moment."
Despite never having played in Translations before joining the new production, Fee tells me that he was already a confirmed Brian Friel fan from his school days and that he got in some early preparation for his role as Owen many years ago courtesy of another aspiring actor in the family.
"I loved Philadelphia, Here I Come!, it's one of my favourite plays," he says of that other famous Friel piece set in the fictional Co Donegal town of Ballybeg.
"We read Translations as a side piece when we did that, so I did know it very well. And actually, funnily enough, my dad played Hugh [the role currently inhabited by Ciarán Hinds in the new production] in an amateur dramatic production of Translations with the Craic Theatre Co in Coalisland.
"My involvement with that was as a prompter behind the cardboard set. It's a very wordy play that's about words and language, so quite often I was used in that capacity to prompt the other actors on stage.
"I was a young teenager then and I read the play a lot as a result. I've always loved it, I really genuinely consider it a masterpiece."
Indeed, some two decades on from this early interaction with Translations and as an Irishman now living and working in Britain, Fee says he connects with his latest role in the 1980 Friel classic as a country boy who goes away to the big city before returning home, where he's forced to reconcile his old and new identities.
"Owen is really wonderful to play, he has a really wonderful arc," explains the Dungannon-born performer, who won the 2018 Whatsonstage Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Play as Michael Carney in Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman, the Sam Mendes-directed West End and Broadway smash.
"He feels as though what he's doing is right and just and progressive and moving things forward – he doesn't want to be threatened with a form of extinction, I guess, and feels that learning English is the way forward. But then he learns the repercussions of that progress and what it costs."
"And I identify with him hugely: whenever I was 18, there was nothing that was going to keep me in Ireland – there was just something inherent in me that desperately wanted to escape and to find the version of myself that existed elsewhere that I couldn't create back home.
"I wanted to remould myself, like a lot of 18-year-olds, but now I feel like I've married that version of myself that I had to go away to find with that sense of home and place that's rooted in Ireland."
Fee adds: "It's a serious play and the things that happen in it invoke a crisis, etc – but it's really funny too. It's not all doom and gloom and I can just have a lot of fun up there."
On the subject of 'fun', the actor has been loving his stint playing opposite the great Ciarán Hinds, a man he describes as "just the best".
"For someone who is genuinely the best actor I have ever come across, it would be easy to be very intimidated – but he is the nicest man you will ever meet: so gentle and accommodating, kind and generous, on stage and in the rehearsal room. He's been so wonderfully supportive.
"I saw Ciarán in his original run last year and his performance was already extraordinary – but he's bringing a different energy to it this time that is just the most thrilling thing to witness.
"It's a real honour to be sharing the stage with him."
And did Fra's dad pass along any helpful hints and tips from his time playing Hugh in Coalisland?
"Thankfully not!," laughs the actor.
"But he is very excited to see Ciarán play a part that he really enjoyed doing."
:: Translations runs at the National Theatre from November 29 until December 18, see Nationaltheatre.org.uk for show dates/times and tickets
