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October 1999 Brooklyn Academy of Music 1999 Next Wave Festival BAMcinematek Brooklyn Philharmonic 651 ARTS Jennifer Bartlett, House: Large Grid, 1998 BAM Next Wave Festival sponsored by PHILIP MORRIS ~lA6(Blll COMPANIES INC. Brooklyn Academy of Music Bruce C. Ratner Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins Joseph V. Melillo President Executive Producer presents The Wh iteheaded Boy Running time: a well-made play in three acts approximately 2 1/2 by Lennox Robinson hours. There will be adapted by Barabbas...the company one intermission. BAM Harvey Lichtenstein Theater October 6-9, 1999, at 7:30 October 10, 1999, at 3:00 Directed by Gerard Stembridge Cast Mrs. Geoghegan Raymond Keane her children George Mikel Murfi Peter Raymond Keane Kate Veronica Coburn Jane Mikel Murfi Baby Mikel Murfi Donough Brosnan, engaged to Jane Veronica Coburn John Duffy, Postmaster & Chairman R.D.C Raymond Keane Delia, his daughter, engaged to Denis Veronica Coburn Hannah, a servant Veronica Coburn .Aunt Ellen Veronica Coburn and Louis Lovett as The Whiteheaded Boy British Airways is the official airline for this presentation. The actors in The Whiteheaded Boy are appearing with the permission of Actors' Equity Association. 17 Producer Enid Reid Whyte Production Designer Sean Hillen Lighting Designer Paul Keogan Costume Designer Kathy Kavanagh Production Stage Manager Miriam Duffy Stage Manager Eimer Murphy Lighting Deputy Eamon Fox American Stage Manager Kim Beringer Publicity in Ireland Mary Folan Photography Kevin McFeely U.S. Tour Representation by David Eden Productions, Ltd. Barabbas...the company 7 South Great Georges Street Dublin 2, Ireland Tel: +353 1 671 2013 Fax: +353 1 6704275 E-mail: [email protected] Company Registered Number 218757 Charity Registered Number 12497 Artistic Director Raymond Keane Company Manager Enid Reid Whyte Administrative Assistant Amy O'Hanlon Publicist Mary Folan Banking A.I.B., Clonskeagh Legal Advisor Philip Lee, Lee McEvoy Barabbas... the company is grant aided by The Arts Council of Ireland; The Cultural Relations Committee of The Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland; The Dublin Council. Funding received from The British Council and Arts for Health's Sake. photo; Kevin McFeely 18 Director's Note Many years ago at an amateur drama festival, I watched our adjudicator comment on one of the great realist dramas, Long Day's Journey into Night. He pointed accusingly at a door on the set and said chidingly, "I wonder if they had locks like that in those days-I don't think so." Realist drama can be a paradise for the pedant. Willy Loman's final scene in Death of a Salesman might be extraordinarily moving-but those shoes just weren't right for that period; a great kitchen-sink drama can be blighted by the question mark hanging over the Fairy Liquid bottle sitting on that sink. Sometimes, too, that quest for perfection in surface detail results in the production being strangled by this pedantry, and, in the case of great plays of the past, reduces them merely to objects of nostalgic interest. So sometimes it's worth exploring such plays differently, getting to the heart of what was on the author's mind. In the case of The Whiteheaded Boy, it is clear that Robinson is fascinated and greatly amused by the fictions that people agree upon; how their personal desires drive them to refute reality or to twist it into something "acceptable." His generous comic vision allows us to laugh at the foolishness of his characters but not to forget that such a world has not yet passed. This world remains a world where truth is a dangerous thing, where influence is preferred to ability, and where what the neighbors say is far more significant than someone's wish to be honest. He is also concerned with the question of what is real and what only has the appearance of reality-and he looks at it all with a sardonic twinkle in his eye. We hope, in this production, to have stayed true to not only his ideas, but also to the way he wanted to express them. -Gerard Stembridge The Playwright Lennox Robinson was born in Douglas, Cork, Ireland, on the fourth of October, 1886. The son of a stockbroker who became a Protestant minister in 1892, Robinson received little formal education. He read extensively and was tutored at home, leaving him free to develop his literary skills by edit­ ing a family magazine with his brothers and sisters. His first play, The Clancy Name, based on a story by his sister, was inspired by an Abbey Theatre tour to Cork in 1907. He said in his autobiography, "It came on me in a flash, as a revelation, that play material could be found outside one's own door, at one's own fireside." He submitted the play to the Abbey, where it was staged with great success. This was the start of a lifelong association with the Abbey, where he was manager and director of plays from 1910-14. After this parting from the Abbey, he became involved with the Carnegie Trust in setting up a library system in Ireland. From 1915-24, he was organizing librarian for the Limerick-Kerry district. During four of those years, he stayed in the house of the O'Brien family in Cahirmoyle. This was where he had his opportunity to get to know Irish rural life, and this was where he wrote The Whiteheaded Boy-using Mrs. Mabel O'Brien as the model for the play's Aunt Ellen. The Play The Whiteheaded Boy was produced at the Abbey in December 1916 and was followed by a London production which secured Robinson's place as a rising new playwright. He returned to the Abbey in 1919 as manager and 19 director of productions and in 1923 was made a member of the Board of Directors. In 1949, he was made an honorary doctor of literature by Trinity College Dublin; in 1951, his official history of the Abbey was published, and in 1953 he was appointed patron of the newly founded All-Ireland Drama Council. He died on the fourteenth of October 1958 and is buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The "well-made play" is an English translation of the French phrase une piece bien faite, used in the early nineteenth century to describe plays that depended on a well-crafted plot. The protagonists meet with complications that build toward a climax followed by a denouement. The style went out of fashion, and the term became a pejorative one by the late nineteenth century, when naturalism, with its focus on characterization, was ushered into the theater world. The style never went away completely, however, and along with its early exponents-Scribe, Sarbou, and Feydeau-the well­ made play has lived on into the twentieth century in the works of many playwrights, including Noel Coward and Lillian Hellman and in The Whiteheaded Boy by Lennox Robinson. The Company Barabbas...the company was founded by Veronica Coburn, Raymond Keane, and Mikel Murfi in 1993, and launched in a three-play festival at Project Arts Centre in 1994. Barabbas, known for company-devised and scripted work, are dedicated to Irish theater that is physical and dynamic, theater that has roots in the traditions of the European continent but has gone on to explore distinctly Irish gesture, and Irish aural and visual culture. Committed to their vision of Irish physical theater and clowning, members of Barabbas individually and collectively have conducted workshops for many of Ireland's theater companies, theater schools, youth theaters, and abroad in London, Wales, and Denmark. Barabbas' innovation, excitement, and high production standards have brought the company an Entertainment Award in the 1997 Pan-Celtic Film and Television Awards; three nominations in the 1998 ESB Irish Times Theatre Awards, including best production for The Whiteheaded Boy; and The 1998 Kilkenny Beer Cream of Irish Theatre Award for its contribution to Irish theater. Barabbas' The Whiteheaded Boy was first produced in Project@the mint, Dublin, in September 1997 in association with Project Arts Centre and is reproduced with the kind permission of The Lennox Robinson Foundation, National Theatre Society, Ltd. 20 1993 Come Down from the Mountain John Clown, John Clown (Sligo) 1994 Festival of Barabbas Come Down from the Mountain John Clown, John Clown; Macbeth; and Half Eight Mass of a Tuesday (Dublin) The Twenty-fourth of February (a collaboration with Brian Hand for EVtA) (Limerick) 1995 Macbeth (Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Sligo, Dublin) Sick Dying Dead Buried Out (in association with Project Arts Centre) (Dublin) 1996 Half Eight Mass of a Tuesday (Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Cork, Arhus, Denmark, Marseilles, France) Clown TV (a Temple Bar Properties Commission for the E.U. Presidency) Strokehauling (a Project Arts Centre Commission for the 1996 Dublin Theatre Festival) (Dublin) Barabbas (with Temple Films) Tei/effs na Gaeilge television series * Entertainment Award, 1997 Pan-Celtic Film & Television Festival 1997 Strokehauling (London) A Uving Clown Exhibit (a St. Patrick's Festival commission) Out the Back Door (in association with The Ark, a cultural center for children) The Whiteheaded Boy (Dublin) 1998 The Whiteheaded Boy (Ireland: Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Kilkenny, Longford, Sligo, Monaghan, Dublin Northern Ireland: Coleraine, Belfast, Derry Wales: Aberystwyth, Cardigan, Brecon, Swansea England: London) 1999 Hupnouse (Dublin, Tallaght) The Whiteheaded Boy (Dublin, Belfast, United States) Planned for 2000 Brilliant Days Blue (a co-production with the Abbey, Ireland's National Theater) 20A Barabbas wish to Les Woznic of Photographics Fiach MacConghail1 and all at the thank our presenters Bewleys Ireland Project Arts Centre in the United States Irish Distillers Tony O'Dalaigh and Fergus and the following for Martin Fahy and Stephen Molloy Linehan, Dublin Theatre Festival their support in at the Abbey Theatre Michael Maloney, Embassy of Ireland: Joy Gleeson, The Gate Theatre Ireland, Washington, D.C.

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