The Plow and the Stars review – Seán O’Casey’s Dublin drama reaches 100 haunting performances | stage

MMarking the centenary of the premiere of Seán O’Casey’s powerful political drama, the Abbey’s latest production opens the door to more flexible and experimental ways of presenting it. The tragicomedy, which caused a riot in 1926, has been produced repeatedly in recent years and is now an integral part of the Irish theater canon.

Set among the residents of Dublin tenements in the run-up to the Easter Rising of 1916, O’Casey’s characters are caught up in events beyond their control. Newly married Nora Clitheroe (Kate Gilmore) tries as best she can to convince her husband Jack (Eamen Fitzgerald Doherty) to stay at home rather than join the Irish Citizen Army march. Nor can she keep the outside world at bay, with her neighbours, the absurdly obsessive Mrs. Gogan (Kate Stanley Brennan) and the lonely drunkard Bessie Burgess (Mary Murray) constantly barging in, with no possible privacy.

Director Tom Creed adds comic emphasis to the opening act, set against a brittle plywood wall in Jamie Vartan’s strikingly simple design. Comedy also takes center stage in the bar scene, where Young Coffee (Thomas Kane Byrne) tricks sex worker Rosie Redmond (Caitriona Ennis) with Marxist slogans, while the barman (Michael Tenet) has to evict the rowdy women from the premises.

Comfortable with O’Casey’s poetically embellished banter, the formidable cast navigates tonal shifts into shock and tragedy, as the city is bombed, confusion reigns and banality evaporates. From the roar of “Rule, Britannia!” From the window, her head bobbing like a crazy doll, Bessie continues to rescue the missing Nora, nursing her from a mental breakdown.

Creed, a gifted opera director, adopts a relaxed operatic approach to period detail here: the plywood walls suggest cheap, poorly built apartments of the day; Characterless and temporary. The final act takes place on a completely bare stage, a child’s coffin and two candles downstage, and Nora stands against the bare back wall, as if facing a firing squad. A departure from the familiar cramped attic, it creates a stark and poignant image. Stripping away the drab Georgian setting de-romanticizes poverty and deprivation, and brings it into the present – ​​which seems an appropriate way to reflect O’Casey’s socialist, anti-heroic perspective.