BLOODY ENOUGH.(The Talk of the Town)(Gabriel Byrne)(Interview)

On the eve of previews of the Roundabout's production of Eugene O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet," Gabriel Byrne, who plays the father in a volatile Irish-immigrant family, sat in front of a mirror in the theatre's basement. A makeup artist was trying out an array of techniques on him, designed to make him look battered and bruised.

"Watch the blood, Angelina," Byrne said softly. He spoke in his natural brogue. (It would occasionally be expanded onstage.) He looked grim. "It should come down in a dribble, not gushing too much," he said, running a finger down his face from a fake head wound to his chin. "Whenever there's blood, I think of Peter O' Toole, when he did his famous production of the Scottish play in London, in 1980. We never speak the name of the Scottish play in a theatre, or else, to escape the bad luck, we have to turn around three times and spit."

"Are you talking about 'Macb--'?" somebody began.

Byrne got up from the makeup chair, his face splotchy with blood and grime, turned clockwise three times, and spat. Then he sat down and said, "O' Toole's Scottish play was savaged by the critics, because he covered it with so much blood. Everyone was dripping with blood. The audience thought it was funny and laughed." He paused. "I'm wary of too much blood, Angelina."

He finger-combed the oozing red stuff on the side of his face and then, with a pinkie, lifted one corner of his top lip. "In there," he said. "A bit of the blood in there, and a dark thing over the teeth. Where the dirty-doing cops hit me."

"We should get mouth blood for there," Angelina said. "The other is heavy blood."

Doug Hughes, the play's cheerful director, came into the room. Byrne turned his head to show him the wounds.