The Plough and the Stars

Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty and Kate Gilmore in The Plough and the Stars. Image: Ros Kavanagh.

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In response to inquiries as to why I didn’t review The Abbey’s centenary opening of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, it’s a fascinating story, for another day perhaps. Today there’s more immediate matters. Including a powerful sense of déjà vu. Of another revival we have to ask did we really need given so many in recent years? The Abbey opting for another big cast, Irish classic, once again directed by Tom Creed. Another shoot for the moon production landing amongst the stars. Its moon eclipsed behind dense, plywood clouds, its stars shining brightly.

Dan Monaghan, Mary Murray and Kate Gilmore in The Plough and the Stars. Image: Ros Kavanagh.

When it comes to The Plough and the Stars there's O’Casey and then there's O’Casey. Ensuring that identical twins are unlikely to agree on its pressing concerns. The rejected prophet’s classic play hymning Dublin, socialism and anti-war protest both loved and loathed when it premiered to riots in 1926. O’Casey's love hate interrogation a disharmony of social, political, gendered and religious opposites. In which incompatible sinners proclaim their moral cleanliness during the days and weeks surrounding the 1916 Rising. A bunch of fussily proud, working class heroes, exercising sniffy respectability, occupying one of Dublin's poverty stricken tenements. As much an invented landscape corresponding to some invisible order as a harsh, social reality.

Thommas Kane Byrne and Dan Monaghan in The Plough and the Stars. Image: Ros Kavanagh.

Despite its propensity for speechifying, characters define The Plough and the Stars and Creed’s invested cast deliver much to admire. Character's local plights made universal, with the glue that binds and tensions that divide abundantly clear. Like Dan Monaghan’s dandyish drinker, Fluther Good. A blowhard bowsie caught between sobriety and drunkenness, Fluther's repairing of a lock on a tenement door highlighting Nora Clitheroe’s social and personal aspirations. Kate Gilmore's marvellous Nora an insult to tenement etiquette for her middle-class propriety. Kate Stanley Brennan's gossiping Mrs Gogan privately deriding the house proud wife who is at odds with her frustrated husband, Jack. Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty’s rebel with an Irish cause eager to escape Nora’s arms so as to take up arms for Ireland. An Ireland which tolerates Evie May O’Brien’s haunting Mollser, a dying child caught in late stage consumption. Aggravating the political tensions between Michael Glenn Murphy’s superbly sulky, Peter Flynn, forever at odds with Thommas Kane Byrne’s excellent Young Covey. The older dignitary endlessly humiliated by the eternal student. Both men enamoured by speeches calling for action, yet never inspired to act. Matthew Malone conveying gravitas and authority as the Man at the Window arguing for change. All arguments dwarfed by Mary Murray’s virulently pugnacious Bessie Burgess, a wounded mother raging at everyone. Most of them at odds with, yet enamoured by, the demands and sacrifices of change whilst reluctant to change. The everyday evident in the epic.

Michael Glenn Murphy, Kate Gilmore, Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty and Thommas Kane Byrne in The Plough and the Stars.

Image: Ros Kavanagh.

If O'Casey's characters often attract, Creed's staging frequently repels. Beginning with Jamie Vartan's lifeless, stonker of a set. One part revolving Jenga puzzle, one part plywood wall, all parts bleaching action and energy before finally giving way to a black box space with revolving stage. O’Casey’s rigorous design details jettisoned for notions of theatrical upperosity that prove derogatory and vicey versie. Staging a pyrrhic defeat, whatever design intended to represent is lost to the ugly, bland and soul suckingly claustrophobic. Set against Catherine Fay’s period costumes, the effect is of neither one thing nor another. Several scenes looking like pantomime rehearsals whilst the set is being constructed. Stephen Dodd’s lights not helping. Adding marginally more texture in the final moments for finding something more to light than a gargantuan plywood wall.

Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty, Domhnall Herdman, Ash Rizi and Kate Gilmore in The Plough and the Stars. Image: Ros Kavanagh.

Leaning into music hall and melodrama, Creed's energised direction opts for broad stroke clarity. A calculated risk, more successful with comedy than tragedy, given O'Casey's tragic-comedy is rich in complexity. The pub shenanigans, including Caitríona Ennis’s delightful Rosie Redmond and Micheal Tient's towering barman, tipping from social realism towards Only Fools and Horses. Part Till Death Do Us Part, part 1920s slapstick if produced by Max Sennett and directed by Hal Roach. But those same broad strokes in the looter’s street scene backfire. If Nora and Jack earlier enjoyed an exquisite moment, (Creed always excellent with moments of intimacy) here everything is reduced to a banshee shouting match alongside a screaming soldier. An exercise in rising decibels rather than rigorous drama. The dramatic finally landing in the closing moments as characters blow less hard. Friendly enemies united in grief and defeat. Murray marvellous as Bessie Burgess, showing greater depth when no longer played for laughs. Helping recover Gilmore's Nora, a Lady Ophelia Macbeth in search of her lost mind and husband, as a character of substance. A powerful moment achieved as both women lock in desperate embrace whilst small, silent men, who talk a larger life, look on powerless and pathetic from a distance. A vivid reminder that women suffer most on account of men's wars. The final moments heartfelt, if not quite heart rending, arriving as a clout rather than a gut punch.

Mary Murray and Kate Stanley Brennan in The Plough and the Stars. Image: Ros Kavanagh

Corresponding to our times or commemorative cash in, if the Abbey’s current production of The Plough and the Stars is not quite memorable it's often rather enjoyable. Mostly on account of its invested cast. Ensuring that even if you don't like it at times, you can't help liking it sometimes. For some that will be enough. For others not near enough. For most the question will linger as to what might have been had iceberg staging not sunk O’Casey’s Titanic?

The Plough and the Stars by Sean O’Casey, runs at The Abbey Theatre until April 30.

For more information visit The Abbey Theatre