The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault
The
Colleen Bawn
By Dion
Boucicault
Directed
by Lisa May
At the
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
On the
11th April 2018
Hardress Cregan/Father Tom/Ensemble Cavan
Clarke
Danny Mann/Bertie O’Moore/Ensemble Patrick McBrearty
Kyrle Daly/Myles Na Coppaleen/Ensemble Bryan Quinn
Mrs Creggan/Sheelah/Ensemble Jo Donnelly
Anne Chute/Ensemble Colette
Lennon Dougal
Mr Corrigan/Ensemble Enda
Kilroy
Eily O’Connor/Ensemble Maeve
Smyth
The
Colleen Bawn (full title The Colleen Bawn or the Brides of Garryowen, first performed in
1860) is the sort of play that rankled with politically committed artists like
W.B.Yeats who saw in it stereotypes of Ireland and Irishness that they were
committed to avoid in their own work. In
a review of the play in 1896 Bernard Shaw said: “I have lived to see The
Colleen Bawn with real water in it, and perhaps I shall live to see it some day
with real Irishmen.” The play attempts
to connect the details of a notorious murder with wider social issues connected
to class, gender and colonialism in Ireland.
A playbill for the first production of the play in New York, 1860,
declared: “Ireland, so rich in scenery, so rich in romance and the warm touch
of nature, has never until now been opened by the dramatist. Irish dramas have hitherto been exaggerated
farces, representing low life or scenes of abject servitude and suffering. Such is not a true picture of Irish society.” Boucicault deliberately used Irish words and
transliterations from the Irish, (e.g. The
Shaugraun, 1874) to convey the sense of a country culturally distinct from
the rest of Britain to audiences in America where he began his work as a
playwright and theatre entrepreneur. Boucicault
was reacting to clichés and stereotypes of Ireland which he saw in plays about
Ireland by the Irish. To Modernists like
Yeats, Boucicault’s work was the perfect example of everything they detested,
popular entertainment rather than high art and popular entertainment of an
innocuous and politically uncommitted kind, characters reduced to the level of
types and a contrived plot spelled out in recapitulations. There are songs, recitatives, merry jigs,
capers, the acting is dedicatedly non-naturalistic, the plot contrived. In fact, the play seems to resemble the epic
theatre that Bertolt Brecht pioneered later in the 20th
century. Perhaps because of contemporary
tastes for entertainment rather than culture it is unsurprising to see
Boucicault back in our theatres.
Boucicault was undeniably popular in his own day,
“the most conspicuous English playwright of the 19th century” according
to the New York Times’ obituary but his work eventually became neglected critically,
falling into decline and becoming symbolic of the trite depictions of stage
Irishmen and women that was exceedingly palatable on the other side of the
Atlantic. His life was as colourful as
his plays, he committed bigamy, possibly because he had the opportunity to
travel to America and back and could thus indulge in several situations,
squandering a good deal of the money he made, because Boucicault did make a
great deal of money.
The mise
en scene is reduced to a cottage’s interior, a traditional symbol of
Ireland, with the typical everyday objects which a cottage contains. This is obviously an uncluttered approach (which
also happens to be inexpensive). Later
in the play one wall is removed, a painted backdrop and billowing sheets
represents the boat journey that Danny Mann and Eily O’Connor (the Colleen Bawn
- meaning ‘fair girl’ in Irish. Her
rival is Anne Chute, the Colleen Ruaidh or red-haired girl, a wealthy heiress
who Hardress must marry to preserve his mother’s stake hold or else his mother
must marry the mortgage holder Mr Corrigan, representative of the Irish landowning
class.) undertake. Everything is done to
imply the traditional form of the drama and traditional subject matter. The reduced mise en scene is perfectly indicative of the simplicity of approach
yet it is undeniably effective. This is
great and obviously crowd-pleasing stuff, predictability is an aesthetic choice,
or so it seems. The melodramatic origins
of the play are everywhere evident, the plot is as convoluted and derivative as
the stereotypes of poacher and (drunken) priest outlined in the drama. Yet, this contrivance is meant to depict
Ireland, not the Ireland that the Irish live in, but an imaginary Ireland where
great complexities are circumscribed by a reductive shorthand. Quaint cottages, whisky, ‘top of the morning
to ye’, ‘power to your arm’ as well as the ‘good’ poacher Myles na Coppaleen and
a lot of other absurdities are prevalent.
It seems that the power and originality of the drama was the substance
of claims of misrepresentation by the following generation of playwrights. This is a good time to redeem Boucicault’s
play and look at it from the perspective of our own time which is not precisely
post-ideological but certainly a good deal more so than were Yeats or Shaw’s
times. In short, The
Colleen Bawn is a lot of fun, hitting all the right notes without becoming
waylaid in anything as meaningless as analysis or the play’s place in
theatrical history. The cast look as if
they are enjoying every moment, even performing the many musical interludes on
instruments, and singing joyfully the songs that punctuate the rather trite
action. The audience undeniably enjoyed
and participated in the unfolding spectacle.
The Colleen Bawn is highly
recommended.
Paul Murphy, Belfast, April 2018
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