DRUID COMPANY MARATHON

REVIEW By Celia Ipiotis

Strung across a series of horrific events leading up to Ireland’s independence, the Druid Company’s marathon presentation of 3 plays by Sean O’Casey throws a floodlight on Ireland’s scars.

Organized by the political events rather than O’Casey’s writing timeline, Gerry Hines (co-founder of the Druid Theatre Company) directs the three works that travel from 1915 to 1922.

The Plough and The Stars is compressed inside a dark tenement where individuals anxiously enter and exit. With revolution underfoot, the ever so impassioned but slightly disorganized enclave of everyday people ramble in and out, worrying about newborns and husbands intent on revolution. Despite the working class characters struggles, they retain a love of words and most importantly song. Evidently, the definition of Irish actor is “one equally proficient acting and singing.”

In an efficient stroke, the actors break-down the set by Francis O’Connor while it swings to a new facing. From tenement to bar, the characters  in Plough hardly relax, twisting into a brawl between two women in the bar and the blurring of the lines between the civilians and the British soldiers. 

For the audience at NYU Skirball Theater, many had difficulty deciphering the heavy Irish accents. Certain actors do enunciate better than others, but for the majority of the play, actions speak much louder than words.

Five years later, a point in Irish history that resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, The Shadow of a Gunman opens. Once more, we peek inside a small room in a dark wood Irish tenement. Again, people knock  on doors or simply barge in, establishing dramatic exclamation points. Painting the scene with the words of poets and Shakespeare, the two men living in one room are opposites. A thin-skinned, lean poet, Marty Rea, clinks away at the typewriter. He shares a room with the rough, braggadocious salesman Rory Nolan. Visited by a blustery landlord, once he exits, two others enter plunking down an oversized purse. 

Their departure opens the door to a charming young lady Caitriona Ennis, supposedly in want of cream. The bouncy, pretty young woman is determined to capture the writer’s interest and finally, through flirtatious poses–leg sliced outward a la Jolie at the Oscars — she captures his innocent heart, then runs off to her upstairs room. When it becomes scarily clear that someone is hiding illegal ammunition in the house, the flighty young girl takes charge before the inevitable calamity.

Consumed by a love of the Irish language pricked by wit and loss, O’Casey’s plays hark back to the ancient Greek dramas; stories forecasting family tragedies defined by war and interrupted by fate. 

The final installment, Juno and the Paycock, pierce’s family betrayal almost as a parallel to the country’s betrayal of its citizens. With the Irish civil war at hand, Captain Jack (Rory Nolan) learns his cousin has died and believes he’s going to inherit his estate. 

Bulldozing his way through any calls for moderation by his wife, Juno (Hilda Fay), the Captain starts to amass his glittery items and blocks out any calls for self restraint. Inside the household,  the war is present in the form of the physically and psychologically injured Tommy Harris and the women intent on working hard, finding love and saving their families. 

Of the three productions, the liveliest and most chilling was The Shadow of a Gunmen. More compact in form and brightly acted, even the Irish tinged language was more decipherable.

Despite some of the theatrical lulls, seeing all three plays in one day becomes a dramatic treat.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis