THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN by Sean O’Casey
THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN by Sean O’Casey at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin on the 18th June, 2015
CREDITS Malcolm Adams Mr Gallogher Gerard Byrne Mr Mulligan Lloyd Cooney Tommy Owens Muiris Crowley Mr Maguire David Ganly Seamus Shields Dan Gordon AdolphusGrigson Louise Lewis Mrs Grigson Amy McAllister Minnie Powell Mark O’Halloran DonalDavoren Jamie O’Neill An Auxiliary Catherine Walsh Mrs Henderson Wayne Jordan Director Sarah Bacon Set and Costume Designer Sarah-Jane Shiels Lighting Designer Mel Mercier Composer and Sound Designer Maisie Lee Assistant Director Sue Mythen Movement Director Katie Davenport Design Assistant
BOOKING DETAILS FOR THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN Dates: 12 June – 1 August Previews: 12 – 15 June on the Abbey stage Times: Tues – Sat 7.30pm, Matinees Wed and Sat 2pm Wednesday matinees 24 June and 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 July. Tickets: €13 – €45 / Conc. €13 – €25
Sean O’Casey’s (1880 – 1964) tragi-comedy set in May, 1920 in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War is once again revived by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin but it does not seem jaded or irrelevant. In fact the issues are once again just as urgent as ever. Ireland is still divided. The issues of war, innocence and guilt are contemporary. Yesterday it was announced that as many as 60 million people are now displaced or seeking asylum as a consequence of wars that rage world-wide. This play speaks about a range of issues which are vital and pressing, urgent and inescapable. ‘The Shadow of a Gunman’ is somehow a farce that is virtually indistinguishable from the farces of Oscar Wilde. It is also part of the ‘Dublin Trilogy’, consisting of this play as well as ‘The Plough and the Stars’ and ‘Juno and the Paycock’, plays that deal with the events and outcomes of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the ensuing War of Independence.
The plot, what there is of it, hinges on mistaken identity for the poet Donal Davoren who lives in this garret is mistaken for an I.R.A man who is on the run. The play, in two acts which occur on the same day, is set in a room in a tenement in Hilljoy Square, Dublin. Davoren shares a room with an unsuccessful peddler, Seamus Shields who is also disillusioned with the struggle for Irish nationhood. He also happens to share Davoren’s enthusiasm for poetry. Davoren is suspected of being a gunman by the other inhabitants of the tenement and is even handed a letter by Mr Gallogher who seeks to enlist I.R.A. assistance in a local dispute. Instead of attempting to refute it he revels in the notoriety especially as it brings him the affections and admiration of Minnie Powell, a woman of 23, who is meant to symbolise an ironic version of Cathleen ni Houlihan. Minnie is depicted as a decent girl who is also gullible and susceptible to Davoren, failing to realise that he is a poet living in a garret rather than a real gunman. Ultimately she pays the price for her innocence as she accepts the bag of Mills bombs that Seamus Shield’s business associate Mr Maguire has left in the room. Mr Maguire is killed in an ambush.
The Black and Tans (in the play the English soldier is an Auxiliary, British special forces operating in Dublin during the War of Independence. The “Auxies”, as they were popularly known, were actually more effective than the Black and Tans who mostly consisted of soldiers and officers demobbed by the British army after WW1. But the Abbey’s version of the play depicts this soldier in Black and Tan outfit) discover the bag in Millie’s room. She is dragged off by them, taken away but the vehicle she is travelling in is ambushed and Millie is killed in the ensuing cross fire. The influence of England on Ireland is felt in several ways. Firstly in Davoren’s reverence for Shelley’s poetry particularly Shelley’s poem ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and the lines from it that Davoren is perpetually quoting, “Ah me! Alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!” Ultimately the lines become Davoren’s epitaph as he is eaten up by shame over the death of Millie. The second potent symbol of English influence is the Auxiliary who appears at the very end of the play. He is never depicted as anything other than a brutal, menacing and disrespectful intruder as he hurls Shield’s plaster religious icons against the walls of the tenement room. It seems that the implied dichotomy is never reconciled except perhaps in the figure of Adolphus Griggson, an alcoholic resident of the tenement, an Orangeman and a Loyalist who is yet certain the oppression meted out to Catholics will also be served to him too. In this way O’Casey recognises (but also Davoren and Shields) that the true seeds of Irish nationalism were planted by Protestants like Charles Stewart Parnell and Henry Grattan.
In the play O’Casey respects the Aristotelian unities and therefore the play is conventional but the approach offers an economy, compression and the overwhelming sense of the inescapability of tragic destiny as the play shifts its lighter tone to the darker elements of the second and final act. In this way it resembles Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ which might be contrasted with the non-Aristotelian approach of Shakespeare, for instance, in ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’. The use of music is particularly effective in the play, when each act is introduced by the darkly evocative music of Mel Mercier and the songs that lighten O’Casey’s text but the predictability of the mise en scene and lighting design is not really surmounted. Dan Gordon as AdolphusGriggson evokes the boorishness, pragmatism and potent realism of the Irish Protestant and Mark O’Halloran as Donal Davoren evokes a would-be poet, dreamer but really a fool who may also be read as a cynical caricature of W.B.Yeats who was also assumed to be an idiot by leading Irish politicians after the establishment of the Republic. However, Yeats (but not Davoren) has been proven to be a visionary as potent as Shelley. Ultimately, this play comments skilfully on the War of Independence era even if it fails to encapsulate it.
Paul Murphy, June 2015
CREDITS Malcolm Adams Mr Gallogher Gerard Byrne Mr Mulligan Lloyd Cooney Tommy Owens Muiris Crowley Mr Maguire David Ganly Seamus Shields Dan Gordon AdolphusGrigson Louise Lewis Mrs Grigson Amy McAllister Minnie Powell Mark O’Halloran DonalDavoren Jamie O’Neill An Auxiliary Catherine Walsh Mrs Henderson Wayne Jordan Director Sarah Bacon Set and Costume Designer Sarah-Jane Shiels Lighting Designer Mel Mercier Composer and Sound Designer Maisie Lee Assistant Director Sue Mythen Movement Director Katie Davenport Design Assistant
BOOKING DETAILS FOR THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN Dates: 12 June – 1 August Previews: 12 – 15 June on the Abbey stage Times: Tues – Sat 7.30pm, Matinees Wed and Sat 2pm Wednesday matinees 24 June and 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 July. Tickets: €13 – €45 / Conc. €13 – €25
Sean O’Casey’s (1880 – 1964) tragi-comedy set in May, 1920 in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War is once again revived by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin but it does not seem jaded or irrelevant. In fact the issues are once again just as urgent as ever. Ireland is still divided. The issues of war, innocence and guilt are contemporary. Yesterday it was announced that as many as 60 million people are now displaced or seeking asylum as a consequence of wars that rage world-wide. This play speaks about a range of issues which are vital and pressing, urgent and inescapable. ‘The Shadow of a Gunman’ is somehow a farce that is virtually indistinguishable from the farces of Oscar Wilde. It is also part of the ‘Dublin Trilogy’, consisting of this play as well as ‘The Plough and the Stars’ and ‘Juno and the Paycock’, plays that deal with the events and outcomes of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the ensuing War of Independence.
The plot, what there is of it, hinges on mistaken identity for the poet Donal Davoren who lives in this garret is mistaken for an I.R.A man who is on the run. The play, in two acts which occur on the same day, is set in a room in a tenement in Hilljoy Square, Dublin. Davoren shares a room with an unsuccessful peddler, Seamus Shields who is also disillusioned with the struggle for Irish nationhood. He also happens to share Davoren’s enthusiasm for poetry. Davoren is suspected of being a gunman by the other inhabitants of the tenement and is even handed a letter by Mr Gallogher who seeks to enlist I.R.A. assistance in a local dispute. Instead of attempting to refute it he revels in the notoriety especially as it brings him the affections and admiration of Minnie Powell, a woman of 23, who is meant to symbolise an ironic version of Cathleen ni Houlihan. Minnie is depicted as a decent girl who is also gullible and susceptible to Davoren, failing to realise that he is a poet living in a garret rather than a real gunman. Ultimately she pays the price for her innocence as she accepts the bag of Mills bombs that Seamus Shield’s business associate Mr Maguire has left in the room. Mr Maguire is killed in an ambush.
The Black and Tans (in the play the English soldier is an Auxiliary, British special forces operating in Dublin during the War of Independence. The “Auxies”, as they were popularly known, were actually more effective than the Black and Tans who mostly consisted of soldiers and officers demobbed by the British army after WW1. But the Abbey’s version of the play depicts this soldier in Black and Tan outfit) discover the bag in Millie’s room. She is dragged off by them, taken away but the vehicle she is travelling in is ambushed and Millie is killed in the ensuing cross fire. The influence of England on Ireland is felt in several ways. Firstly in Davoren’s reverence for Shelley’s poetry particularly Shelley’s poem ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and the lines from it that Davoren is perpetually quoting, “Ah me! Alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!” Ultimately the lines become Davoren’s epitaph as he is eaten up by shame over the death of Millie. The second potent symbol of English influence is the Auxiliary who appears at the very end of the play. He is never depicted as anything other than a brutal, menacing and disrespectful intruder as he hurls Shield’s plaster religious icons against the walls of the tenement room. It seems that the implied dichotomy is never reconciled except perhaps in the figure of Adolphus Griggson, an alcoholic resident of the tenement, an Orangeman and a Loyalist who is yet certain the oppression meted out to Catholics will also be served to him too. In this way O’Casey recognises (but also Davoren and Shields) that the true seeds of Irish nationalism were planted by Protestants like Charles Stewart Parnell and Henry Grattan.
In the play O’Casey respects the Aristotelian unities and therefore the play is conventional but the approach offers an economy, compression and the overwhelming sense of the inescapability of tragic destiny as the play shifts its lighter tone to the darker elements of the second and final act. In this way it resembles Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ which might be contrasted with the non-Aristotelian approach of Shakespeare, for instance, in ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’. The use of music is particularly effective in the play, when each act is introduced by the darkly evocative music of Mel Mercier and the songs that lighten O’Casey’s text but the predictability of the mise en scene and lighting design is not really surmounted. Dan Gordon as AdolphusGriggson evokes the boorishness, pragmatism and potent realism of the Irish Protestant and Mark O’Halloran as Donal Davoren evokes a would-be poet, dreamer but really a fool who may also be read as a cynical caricature of W.B.Yeats who was also assumed to be an idiot by leading Irish politicians after the establishment of the Republic. However, Yeats (but not Davoren) has been proven to be a visionary as potent as Shelley. Ultimately, this play comments skilfully on the War of Independence era even if it fails to encapsulate it.
Paul Murphy, June 2015
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