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Irish Theatre in Transition This page intentionally left blank Irish Theatre in Transition From the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century Edited by Donald E. Morse University of Debrecen, Hungary Introduction, selection & editorial matter © Donald E. Morse 2015 Individual chapters © Contributors 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-45068-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-49705-8 ISBN 978-1-137-45069-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137450692 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Irish theatre in transition : from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century / Donald E. Morse [editor]. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English drama—Irish authors—History and criticism. 2. English drama—20th century—History and criticism. 3. English drama—21st century—History and criticism. 4. Theater—Ireland—History. I. Morse, Donald E., 1936– editor. PR8789.I68 2015 822'.91099417—dc23 2014038807 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. To Christopher Murray Who taught us all This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations ix List of Tables x Preface xi Acknowledgements xii Notes on Contributors xiii Introduction: The Irish Theatre in Transition 1 Donald E. Morse Part I Foundations and Refoundations in Historical Perspective 1 The Irish Theatre: The First Hundred Years, 1897–1997 13 Christopher Murray Part II Engaging with a Changing Reality 2 Black Hole Experiences: Moochers, Smoochers, Dig Outs and the Parables and Spasms of Time in Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive 33 Eamonn Jordan 3 Queer Creatures, Queer Place: Otherness and Normativity in Irish Drama from Synge to Friel 54 José Lanters 4 Troubled Relations of Gender and Generation in Celtic Tiger Drama: Stella Feehily’s Duck and O Go My Man 68 Mária Kurdi 5 ‘The Politics of Aging’: Frank McGuinness’s The Hanging Gardens 82 Donald E. Morse Part III Enhanced Theatricality 6 Theatricality and Self-Reflexivity: The Play-within-the-Play in Select Contemporary Irish Plays 99 Csilla Bertha vii viii Contents 7 When the Mirror Laughs: Face to Face with Three Recent Irish Stage Worlds 122 Eric Weitz 8 Then Like Gigli, Now Like Bette: The Grotesque and the Sublime in Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus 137 Ondrˇej Pilný Part IV Reframing Transition 9 Shakespearean Productions at the Abbey Theatre, 1970–1985 149 Patrick Lonergan 10 Snapshots: A Year in the Life of a Theatre Judge 162 Nicholas Grene 11 The Irish Play on the London Stage: An Overview from Independence to the Present 178 Peter James Harris Part V Inventiveness and Expanding the Stage 12 The Diverse Dramatic Contributions of Frank McGuinness 191 Helen Heusner Lojek 13 Pat Kinevane’s Forgotten and Silent: Universalizing the Abject 205 Joan FitzPatrick Dean 14 Writing for ‘the real national theatre’: Stewart Parker’s Plays for Television 216 Clare Wallace 15 Playing with Minds: Beckett on Film 230 Dawn Duncan Part VI On the ‘Re-Foundation’ of the Irish Theatre 16 Sam Shepard, Irish Playwright 241 Stephen Watt Further Reading 257 Index 260 List of Illustrations 1.1 The original Abbey Theatre recreated digitally from archival materials. Image research by Hugh Denard with visualization by Nóho 20 5.1 Niall Buggy (Sam Grant) in The Hanging Gardens by Frank McGuinness. Directed by Patrick Mason. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh. Courtesy of the Abbey Theatre 93 6.1 Angel Landy (Fiona O’Shaunessy) in Blackwater Angel by Jim Nolan. Directed by Mark Glesser. Photograph by Jessica Brown. Courtesy of the Finborough Theatre 109 7.1 Una Kavanagh (Alpha A) in The Boys of Foley Street. Anu Productions. Directed by Louise Lowe. Photograph by Pat Redmond. Courtesy of Anu Productions 133 8.1 Andrea Irvine, Aidan Kelly and Eileen Walsh in Terminus by Mark O’Rowe. Directed by Mark O’Rowe. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh. Courtesy of the Abbey Theatre 138 10.1 Owen Roe (Petruchio) and Pauline McLynn (Katharina) in The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. Directed by Lynne Parker. The Taming of the Shrew, programme cover, © Rough Magic Theatre Company 166 10.2 Ailish Symons (Young Woman) in Drive-By by Tom Swift. Directed by Jo Mangan. Performance Corporation. Photograph by Colm Hogan. Courtesy of the Performance Corporation and the photographer Colm Hogan 170 13.1 Pat Kinevane in Silent. Fishamble: The New Play Company. Directed by Jim Culleton. Photograph by Ger Blanch. Courtesy of Fishamble: The New Play Company 207 15.1 Kristin Scott Thomas, Alan Rickman, and Juliet Stevenson (W1, M, W2) in Play by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Anthony Minghella. Courtesy of Blue Angel Films 232 16.1 Stephen Rea (Hobart Struther) in Kicking a Dead Horse by Sam Shepard. Directed by Sam Shepard. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh. Courtesy of the Abbey Theatre 242 ix List of Tables 11.1 Irish plays most produced on the London stage from 1920 to 2013 183 11.2 Irish playwrights most produced on the London stage from 1990 to 2013 184 11.3 Irish plays by contemporary playwrights most revived on the London stage 185 x Preface The Irish Theatre in Transition has been a great pleasure to edit thanks to the hard work of the contributors and the generosity of the Palgrave Macmillan editors. I wish to thank the commissioning editor, Paula Kennedy, for her early support, encouragement and decisiveness, the assistant editor, Peter Cary, for his patience with my many queries, his unflagging good humour and willingness to help when things looked bleak and the copy-editor Monica Kendall for her knowledge, wonder- ful attention to detail and patient willingness to explain. All three have been unflaggingly helpful beyond any expectation. This book might never have appeared were it not for the intervention and support of Anthony Roche who has earned my and all the contribu- tors’ gratitude. Special thanks go as well to Amelia Stein, the Dublin photographer, for the marvellous cover image and for her extraordinary forbearance and generosity. Also, as editor, I wish to thank Neil MacPherson, Finborough Theatre Artistic Director, and Marketa Dowling, General Manager, Fishamble: The New Play Company for their invaluable assistance, and Mairead Delaney for ferreting out images from the Abbey archive. Also heartfelt thanks go to Hugh Denard of the Classics Department at Trinity College Dublin for generously supplying the image of the original Abbey Theatre lost to fire but reconstructed digitally through research. Above all, I wish to thank Csilla Bertha for her unstinting help, excel- lent advice and unwavering support for this project. Finally, it is a great pleasure to join with all the contributors in dedi- cating this book to Christopher Murray, primus inter pares among Irish theatre scholars from whom we have all learned so much and whose friendship we prize. Donald E. Morse Debrecen, 2014 xi Acknowledgements Portions of Chapter 1 appeared in modified form in Christopher Murray, ‘The Foundation of the Modern Irish Theatre: A Centenary Assessment’ in the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 4.1–2 (1998): 39–56, Donald E. Morse, editor. Used by permission of Donald E. Morse, editor and the University of Debrecen Press. Copyright 1998 by Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. A portion of Chapter 6, ‘Theatricality and Self-Reflexivity: The Play- within-the-Play in Select Contemporary Irish Plays’, was previously published in Focus, Papers in English Literary and Cultural Studies, Special Issue on the Interfaces between Irish and European Theatre (University of Pécs, 2012) and is here reprinted and revised by permission of the editor, Mária Kurdi. Copyright 2012 by Csilla Bertha. Grateful acknowledgement to Rough Magic for permission to repro- duce the theatre programme for their production of The Taming of the Shrew. Cover photograph generously supplied by the photographer, Amelia Stein, and used by permission of the Abbey Theatre. Jane Brennan (Constance Wilde) in The Fall of Constance Wilde by Thomas Kilroy. Directed by Patrick Mason. Courtesy of the Abbey Theatre. xii Notes on Contributors Csilla Bertha, Associate Professor of Irish Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary, is a member of the International Advisory Board of Irish University Review (Dublin) and its bibliography committee, serves as Contributing Editor of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, is a founding director of the Interna tional Centre for Literatures in English (Graz, 1987) and honorary chair of the Hungarian Yeats Society.

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