THEY were all there, all the Victorians and their dam. Queen Victoria, her consort Prince Albert, her sons Arthur and George, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Florence Nightingale, in Moore Street, Dublin, yesterday.
All pulling on a rope in a tug-o-war with the lone Jimmy Fay taking on such weighty company. He is their director in the play Early Morning, by Edward Bond, which opens in the Project, at the Mid on Henry Place (off Henry Street) tonight.
It is the last production in their successful "Theatre of Cruelty" series, presented by the Bedrock company. Early Morning has the distinction of having been banned in Britain. "Swinging" London may have been in the 1960s, but this play proved too much for the Lord Chamberlain in 1969. The explicit violence was cited by some, but others believed it was because of its assault on those British icons, the royal family and empire.
Nowadays, when the affairs of the British royal family make Fair City seem like The Waltons, no one would take particular notice of a play featuring Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale as lovers. Or even of a "quite grotesque" send-up of Tory values which is "not subtle at all", as Mr Fay described it.
The notable absentee from this Victorian panoply was Jack the Ripper. No one knew why, though it was agreed he was a most likely candidate for a theatre of cruelty production. However, there was a skull, mistaken for Yorick. Prince Arthur compounded the confusion by posing as Prince Hamlet with the skull, in an "Alas poor Yorick" manner, against a background of "oranges, apples, and ripe bananas" Such cruelty.
Mary O'Driscoll as Queen Victoria, Shane Lynch as Disraeli and Liz Kuti as Florence Nightingale with members of the cast of Early Morning rehearse the tug-o-war scene. Photograph: Eric Luke
