I once missed Led Zeppelin in Madison Square Garden, and
didn’t attend The Who, with The Clash opening, at Shea Stadium, so help me god!
I even scalped a ticket to Bruce Springsteen for thrice the
price in lean times, but under no circumstances will I miss the upcoming Dublin
Trilogy of Sean O’Casey at the Irish Repertory Theatre.
It’s not as if I haven’t seen The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno
and the Paycock, or The Plough and the Stars before – I even attended opening
night of the latter back in 1988 when it was the Rep’s first offering.
But to see all three in sequence will be like getting a
front seat to one of Ireland’s most turbulent periods of history as seen
through the jaundiced eye of its greatest playwright.
Nor was O’Casey some casual hurler on the ditch, he was an
active participant in the years of industrial turmoil that led to Dublin’s 1913
Lockout right through to the end of the Civil War in 1923.
My grandfather adored these three plays and thought nothing
of driving the 80 miles to Dublin for a decent production.
Odd in itself as Thomas Hughes was a conservative Catholic
Republican. O’Casey on the other hand had strong communist sympathies, and was a
Protestant to boot.
But their world was “in a state of chassis” - many
Republicans had been excommunicated, while many Christians had grown to
question the alliance of their churches with a brutal capitalist world order.
One thing Sean O’Casey and Thomas Hughes had in common was a
dislike for James Connolly. I once heard my grandfather mutter that “Connolly
was nothing but a little Scottish troublemaker,” a sentiment shared by O’Casey.
They both, however, adored Big Jim Larkin, labor agitator
supreme and founder of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union – strange
in my grandfather’s case, since he was a small businessman.
But that’s part of the magic of this dynamic era, and
O’Casey captures it so well in his plays.
William Butler Yeats, O’Casey’s champion at the Abbey
Theatre, said that poetry should be “cold and passionate as the dawn.” He was
intimating that balance is essential in all things, especially art.
He could have been speaking about O’Casey’s trilogy, all
tragicomedies balancing on a fine fulcrum.
Set in Dublin’s fatigued tenements,
tragedy lurks around every corner, and humor one of the few ways of combating the
roiling poverty.
But overplay either tragedy or mirth and the audience can be
in for a long evening.
There’s little fear of that happening at the Rep. They know
their O’Casey, and although Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly have differing
directorial skills and process, they always highlight O’Casey’s sheer humanity
and love for his characters.
One way or another all three directors will have a wonderful
repertory cast to work with.
As ever I’m interested in seeing Terry Donnelly and John
Keating, two of my favorite Rep veterans, both outstanding O’Casey
interpreters.
Terry is what I call a “light-stealer.” No matter the part
she soaks up the light onstage and I always await her entrance – the energy in
the room shifts and it’s hard to take your eyes off her.
Though John’s entrances are equally powerful, at first his
comedic chops sweep all before him, but gradually he coaxes out the tragedy inherent
in all O’Casey’s major characters.
There’s a pathos to this 20th Century playwright
that some modern interpreters are wary of. Bald as it may be it never bothers
me, for those times were indeed tragic. A dream was betrayed, and the Irish people
traded one set of masters for another.
Sean O’Casey never lets us forget that. And over the next
four months the Irish Repertory Theatre will bring his turbulent world roaring
back to life.
O’Casey bared the soul of a nation in these plays. The
political and social questions he asked have yet to be answered.
And yet, Captain Boyle’s innocent, if enigmatic, inquiry to Joxer
Daly is still my favorite, “What is the stars?”
Perhaps The Rep will answer it this time round.
