In a DruidO’Casey program note, designer Francis O’Connor writes that when director Garry Hynes and she began work on reviving The Plough and the Stars, Shadow of a Gunman, and Juno and the Paycock for the Druid touring theatre company, they decided they “should view the [Sean O’Casey] trilogy as one play — one play in three parts over seven tumultuous years.”
In part they’ve succeeded impressively. First performed at Dublin’s Abbey Theater, The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) look probingly and unforgivingly at the 1916 Irish uprising, the latter of the works getting underway just before the incendiary conflicts begin and the other two extending to 1924.
In other words, the first Abbey audience members were looking at versions of themselves. Surely, this accounts for the shocked responses that ensued. (A riot flared at the fourth Plough and the Stars performance.)
[Read Bob Verini’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Those early patrons were not watching armed skirmishes, though. A warrior, or two, do cannonball through a door from time to time in Hynes’ now three-act play in nine scenes, but what O’Casey depicts are domestic situations.
And here’s where Hynes’ determination to draw close attention to underlying themes rings a reverberating bell. It’s where O’Casey’s purposes come through like a piercingly repetitive factory whistle. The Dubliners that the playwright depicts in their tenement surroundings are to a man and woman dysfunctional. They’re at their wit’s end with one another. They’re all but interruptedly argumentative, vituperative. They’re in irrevocable despair, the women regularly more so than the men. They often break into traditional tunes without keening in the Irish manner, but make no mistake: They represent the Irish people keening from their battered hearts.
These characters —- despite intermittent comic outbursts — are so close to being defeated by life that it’s almost as if the continuing outside gunfire and exploding bombs (sound designer Gregory Clarke has a battlefield day throughout) become not only a frequently imposing backdrop for the indoor dramas but even more a metaphor for a country populated by the lost.
Among other recurring events furthering O’Casey’s overarching doom are the several times the wronged, even the sometime cheerful and innocent characters, become undeserving victims. The effect of his observations is that when the 1845-52 potato famine ended, what lingered was an enduring national malaise. It’s as if O’Casey (born John Casey in 1880) was so caught up in it that he could do nothing else but recognize and record it.
Yes, as the three plays unfold in DruidO’Casey, the scripts’ impact is evident. (I attended the first of two Saturday marathons; the plays are also presented separately.) The productions that the usually incomparable Hynes gives the classic trilogy are, however, less than her best. That’s as O’Connor, Clarke, lighting designer James F. Ingalls, and musical director-composer Conor Linehan work industriously alongside her.
Shadow of a Gunman, the shortest of the three, comes closest to being completely realized in that its comic/tragic pace is kept taut from start to finish. Would be poet Donal Davoren (Marty Rea) and Seumas Shields (Rory Nolan) share their tenement space while bickering, Shields spending most of his time in bed beneath a crucifix. Coming though the door, which might as well be revolving but isn’t, are several other characters who believe, against Donal’s appearance to the contrary, that he’s a gunman on the run.
Primary among the interlopers is Mr Maguire (Liam Heslin), who leaves a stuffed and questionable handbag behind. The other insistent visitor is Minnie Powell (Caitriona Ennis), who says she’s ambling by to borrow a cup of milk but who really means to milk the encounter romantically. She’s the one, likeably silly as she is, who meets the worst fate, of course, reiterating O’Casey’s point about innocence.
As The Plough and the Stars goes, Hynes has troubles making its two focal scenes fit together. She inherits the problem in part from O’Casey, who was 43 when the play bowed but still showed signs of a young scribe finding his way. It’s a problem Hynes doesn’t resolve. This tenement — comfortable when first revealed, then pared down to somewhat confusing abstraction by O’Connor — is home to the recently married Jack Clitheroe (Heslin) and Nora Clitheroe (Sophie Lenglinger).
Though entering late, they’re meant to be the center of attention, he leaving her so he can serve with the Irish Citizen Army, she left behind and eventually going to mental pieces. That’s right, she’s this play’s innocent. Hanging around a good deal are Mrs Gogan (Sarah Morris) with her big mouth and Fluther Good (Aaron Monaghan), who makes a habit of getting in the way.
As for Juno and the Paycock, which is the trilogy’s cake-taker, Hynes all but incredibly falls short of finding the proper bad-times-good-times-bad-times-again rhythms as a legacy looks as if it’ll bail out the struggling Boyle family but doesn’t. Juno Boyle (Hilda Fay) has a helluva hard go trying to manage her household while Captain Jack Boyle (Nolan) would rather bring himself home drunk than bring home the bacon. Bouts of bad legs suddenly and questionably sideline him.
Usually, Captain Jack has conniving drunk Joxer Daly (Monaghan) with him. The other Boyle occupants are Johnny (Tommy Harris), who’s lost an arm fighting for Ireland but has another secret up his empty sleeve, and daughter Mary (Zara Devlin), who almost marries the suave Charles Bentham (Heslin). She’s the betrayed innocent here. Hynes sees to it that the play’s ending picks up some devastating momentum but maybe a bit too late.
Consistently lifting the three-pronged DruidO’Casey is the 18-strong cast, notably Heslin, Lenglinger, Davoren, Nolan, Ennis, Fay, Morris, Devlin, and Monaghan. Glasses raised to them and, really, to all 18.
During intermissions and the hour dinner break, ticket buyers buzzed to one another that they couldn’t hear properly. So, hearing devices are encouraged. Although, the difficulty may also suggest that O’Casey’s intimate gaze at a population under duress may more effectively benefit from being placed in a more intimate space. What’s the Abbey’s seating capacity, anyway?
DruidO’Casey: Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy opened October 4, 2023, at the NYU Skirball Center and runs through October 14. Tickets and information: nyuskirball.org
