Galway International Arts Festival 2026: The Shaughraun

Aaron Monaghan and Marty Rae in The Shaughraun. Image, Ros Kavanagh

*****

There’s stories we tell ourselves and there’s the stories we tell ourselves about the stories we tell ourselves. Take Dion Boucicault’s penultimate play The Shaughraun. Boucicault’s comic melodrama of a wrongly convicted Fenian who escapes an Australian prison and returns to his native Sligo (Slee-go for those afflicted with RP). With the help of roguish, whiskey swilling poacher, Conn The Shaughraun, a convoluted carnival ensues in which a cute cailín falls for an occupying captain, moustache twirling villains kidnap women from their homes, an Irish mother laments her wayward son, and a long suffering priest tries keep everyone on the straight and narrow. A Broadway and London blockbuster when it premiered in 1874, The Shaughraun’s slapstick shenanigans and silent movie set-ups prove irresistible to this day. Like butter churning sexual innuendos, The Shaughraun’s gags and physical comedy routines never get old.

Marie Mullens, Aaron Monaghan and Pattie Maguire in The Shaughraun. Image, Ros Kavanagh

That, broadly, covers the story. Presented as musical hall, vaudevillian pantomime by the inimitable Garry Hynes. Director Hynes giving a masterclass in how best to revive neglected classics, leaning into The Shaughraun’s history and conventions with a touch of meta-theatricality. So consistently brilliant is Hynes, Galway should probably start carving her statue, which is long overdue. Along with one for Druid co-founder, the irrepressible Marie Mullens, commanding the stage with fierce hilarity as The Shaughraun’s mother Mrs. Kelly. Also in line for statues are Druid stalwarts Marty Rae and Aaron Monaghan. Rae suitably magnificent as the heroic rebel in love with family, country and his beautiful wife, Arte (the hilarious Eileen Walsh channelling her inner librarian to terrific effect). A straight man to Monaghan’s comic Conn; Monaghan’s genius for timing, tone, physicality, even puppetry, is second to none. The invested Monaghan deserving double salary as a relentless stage hand navigating Francis O’Connor’s meta-theatrical puzzlezbox of mapped walls, hidden doors and jury galleries. And you might as well throw in a statue for that other Druid ensemble member, Rory Nolan whose Dickensian, silent movie villain, Kinchela, is gloriously funny. A man you hate to love, all top hat snobbery and ginger haired duplicity, Kinchela is sublime in his slimey arrogance as the tangled web he practices to deceive unravels.

Jamie Beamish and Rory Nolan in The Shaughraun. Image, Ros Kavanagh

When it comes to the story we tell ourselves about the story, matters become a little more complex. To some, The Shaughraun, like much of Boucicault’s plays, is an embarrassment in the canon of Irish theatre, responsible for the creation and propagation of the ignorant, stage Oirish. As the century turned and rebel Ireland was fashioning new role models, whiskey swilling rogues did not make for a heroic look. Drunken, trickster Irish charmers, exemplified perfectly by Monaghan, had no place in a new Ireland. Also, plays that compromised with the enemy, like Fenton Kinsella's enchanting Captain Molineux, were not promoting the right message.

Peter Daly and Marty Rae in The Shaughraun. Image, Ros Kavanagh

If that's the story about the story, it's arguably the wrong story. And certainly not the whole story. That would involve acknowledging how dangerous it was to promote the Irish on the international stage. Reviled through much of America, seen as colonised fodder to be kept in their place by Britain, any efforts to promote Irish identity would be ruinous. In his brilliant programme notes, Patrick Lonergan reminds us that even intellectuals like Henry James (and Louisa May Alcott) loathed the Irish. What Boucicault did was cleverly smuggle the Irish onstage in a humorous, non-threatening manner. Knowing that presence and visibility is the first step towards identity. In the same way TV personalities like John Inman, Larry Grayson and Liberace used camp to promote queer identity in a nonthreatening way before a homophobic public. Often dismissively derided today, it was these brave artists who prised open the door for those who later knocked it off its weakened hinges. And Boucicault was smarter again. Look closely and the Irish are loyal, resilient, smarter than their oppressors and exude quite dignity beneath their earthy shenanigans. Boucicault’s Irish women, like Megan Cusack’s excellent Clare Ffolliot, or Pattie Maguire’s superb Moya, also ahead of their time. Both independent, strong willed, wild Irish roses.

Megan Cusack in The Shaughraun. Image, Ros Kavanagh

Before there was The Quiet Man there was The Shaughraun. Before there was Maureen O’ Hara’s spirited Kate there was the fierce Clare Ffolliott. Before there was world weary priests, there was Fr. Dolan, played to perfection by Peter Daly. Before Barry Fitzgerald’s Michaleen Oge Flynn there was Conn The Shaughraun, the latter arguably a younger version of the former. While Boucicault helped fashion notions of Irish identity, especially in America, there was more to it than stage Oirishness. The first play in Druid’s Strange Country: Ireland in America season (followed later this year by Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for The Misbegotten), The Shaughraun is a fantastic place to begin discussion. But even if that’s not your thing, you’d be a fool to miss this brilliant production. The Shaughraun an unapologetic taste of Irish brogue where the girls get their men, heroes save the day and villains, including Jamie Beamish’s brilliantly squeamish Harvey Duff, all get their comeuppance. A hilarious, fun filled, thrilling comic rollercoaster, The Shaughraun is a tailor’s thimble of theatrical joy.

The Shaughraun by Dion Boucicault, presented by Druid runs at Town Hall Theatre as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2026 until July 25.

For more information visit Galway International Arts Festival or Druid.