Fintan O'Toole reviews a lucid and energetic revival of Brian Friel's Making History, produced by Ouroboros at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Dublin, while Gerry Colgan finds No Exit at Players Theatre is a play that might have passed its sell-by date.
Making History, Samuel Beckett Centre, Dublin
It is still a strange experience, for an Irish tourist, to walk down O'Donnell Street in Seville and suddenly realise that it is named after Red Hugh, or to stumble across the grave of Hugh O'Neill in the Franciscan church of San Pietro in Rome.
Intellectually, if you have any grasp of history, you know that these men were just another bunch of aristocrats animated by self-interest. Emotionally, however, you are inundated by a huge backwash of tragic romance. The Twilight Lords making their doomed last stand for Gaelic civilisation is an inherited myth whose power is almost entirely undiminished by all the complications uncovered by diligent historians. And this gap between historical fact and tribal mythology is precisely the space that is mapped by Brian Friel's 1988 play Making History.
This is, of course, a demanding, almost abstract subject for a play. Making History is the closest thing in late 20th century Irish theatre to the plays of Shaw: a drama that responds less to events than to ideas. It is Friel's response to the debate about historical revisionism in Ireland in the 1980s. And just to make the angle of approach even more oblique, Friel essentially suggests that both sides in that debate are right.
At the core of the play is the Catholic archbishop Peter Lombard, writing a history of O'Neill's life. That history, as it winds itself around the events of the play, is a piece of proto-nationalist myth-making. It will suppress O'Neill's complexities: his English upbringing, the times he fought with the English against Irish chieftains, his submission after the battle of Kinsale and his English wife Mabel Bagenal. It is a lie. But, Lombard argues, it is a necessary lie. If history is structured according to the needs of the moment, why should we not acknowledge the needs of the Irish for a consolatory story of tragic and noble defeat?
This abstract argument is never fully transformed into drama, and Making History remains, even in this lucid and energetic revival by the Dublin company Ouroboros, a problematic play. The long diminuendo of O'Neill's exile in Rome creates a sense of anti-climax, even of incompleteness. Lombard, who is really the pivotal figure in the play, is too sketchily characterised to be more than a vehicle for Friel's exposition of the argument. As a result, his sudden rhetorical irruptions, however brilliantly expressed, sit oddly with the more fully dramatised surrounding context. Niall Tóibín in the original Field Day production and Philip O'Sullivan here both invested the role with an orotund grandeur, yet neither could quite disguise its weightlessness.
Yet, Making History is also intriguing for the way it mirrors its own argument. Just as, in Lombard's view, the artistry of the myth-maker must overcome the messy facts of the historian, so in the play the rhetorical power of Friel's language ultimately overbears the awkwardness of the material. Making History is beautifully written. Some passages - such as O'Neill's withdrawal into memories of his youth in England at the moment when he learns that Spanish aid is on the way and that open rebellion is inevitable - display a pure dramatic genius. The rhythmic cadences of the dialogue weave a spell.
It would be intriguing to see a more radical production of the play than Geoff Gould's for Ouroboros, one which tried to turn its problematic angularity into a virtue rather than attempting to smooth it out. But Making History is still finding its place in the canon of modern Irish theatre and Gould's more cautious approach here may well be justified.
What he gives us is a crisp and clear account, with impressive production values. (Sinead Cuthbert's costume designs, for example, are quite stunning.) The casting is spot-on, with Denis Conway's O'Neill standing out for its exemplary balance of robust, arrogant vigour and dark, restless anxiety. Conan Sweeny is a perfect counterfoil as the devil-may-care O'Donnell, and Tony Flynn as O'Neill's secretary Harry, Holly Radford as Mabel and Helene Henderson as her sister Mary embody the English elements of his life with force and precision. The play may not emerge as a masterpiece, but it does stand forth as undoubtedly the work of a master. Fintan O'Toole
Runs to Sep 10
No Exit, Players Theatre, Trinity, Dublin
Existentialism, which tries to explain man's nature solely in the light of his experience, is usually associated with Jean Paul Sartre, and his play Huis Clos is regarded as his best dramatic attempt to embody his thoughts in fiction. This translation is by Joshua Edelman, who also directs.
By the end, it had generated an uneasy awareness that, in both intellectual and dramatic content, the play seemed to have passed its sell-by date. Once its main characters have been installed by the valet in their comfortable room, aware that they are dead and in hell, the dialogue and minimal action become repetitious, with nowhere to go.
Garcin is a South American journalist with a hang-up about macho courage, who was shot for cowardice. Inez is a lesbian killed by her suicidal lover, who gassed them both. Estelle is a man-mad society flapper, who had killed her baby so as not to be restrained from her pursuit of pleasure. They gradually come to realise, in the famous cliche spoken by Garcin, that hell is other people, and that they have been assigned to make death unbearable for each other.
So it goes. Garcin lusts after Estelle, who would respond except for the fact that she is desired by Inez, who frustrates the other two's attempts to satisfy each other's waning passions. Round and round it goes, spiced with abuse and dislike, certainly a hell of sorts - but a more tolerable one than its traditional Christian equivalent.
The acting (Malcolm Adams, Alan Walshe, Kelly-Anne Byrne and Helena Lewin) is generally solid, although with occasional lapses into inaudibility. An excellent set design by Charlotte O'Connor helps, but the play itself, in the final analysis, undermines a good attempt. Gerry Colgan
Runs to Sep 10
