Dublin's Fourth Theatre Festival

DUBLIN'S FOURTH THEATRE FESTIVAL DUBLIN'S FOURTH INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL opened with the sensational news that Sean O'Casey had refused permission for the presentation of his play The Drums of Father Ned. This, of course, is the play that reputedly had been banned by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin two Festivals previously. Now here was the Festival Committee evidently willing and anxious to defy that ban. And no one was standing in the way but Mr. O'Casey. In a letter to The Irish Times an Abbey Theatre Director accused Mr. O'Casey of banning his own play. Evidence was produced that on the occasion of the earlier Festival Mr. O'Casey had publicly stated that he had withdrawn the play because he refused to allow the Dublin Globe Theatre company to alter it to their satisfaction. The letter-writer went on to accuse Mr. O'Casey of trying to create the impression that his plays were no longer acceptable in the land of his birth. He then challenged Mr. O'Casey to lift his ban, stating that the Abbey Theatre would in this event produce every play in the O'Casey canon in the order in which each was written. Mr. O'Casey did not reply. On the occasion of the alleged archiepiscopal ban on O'Casey it was also stated that a proposed dramatisation of James Joyce's Ulysses had fallen under the interdict, and Mr. O'Casey himself made not a little fuss about the fact that his ban on all future production of his plays by the Abbey Theatre was issued as much on Joyce's behalf as on his own. Yet here was the Festival flaunting a presentation of Mary Manning's The Voices of Shem, and evidently challenging the archbishop's alleged antipathy to the work of James Joyce. And still Mr. O'Casey seemed to be determined to observe "a dead silence," leaving the Festival Committee in a mind which is best described by one of Mr. O'Casey's own phrases: "It's all very curious, isn't it?" The Festival's completed programme, which covered three weeks, included works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Brecht, Strindberg, Kafka, Moliere, Feydeau, Williams, Ionesco, Genet, Joyce, Wilde, and Yeats. There was also a world premiere of a play by an English dramatist, Hugh Ross Williamson's Teresa of Avila and three new plays by young Irish dramatists, James Douglas's North City Traffic, Straight Ahead, John B. Keane's No More in Dust, and Hugh Leonard's The Passion of Peter Ginty. In addition, there was a triple bill presentation of Britain's "new wave" dramatists entitled Counterpoint. This included one-act 21 22 MODERN DRAMA May plays by Harold Pinter, James Saunders, and David Compton. The Abbey Theatre's contribution to the Festival consisted of a revival of a play by one of its finest craftsmen, Lennox Robinson's The Whiteheaded Boy along with The Long Sorrow, a one-act play by a new Irish dramatist, Thomas Coffey. There were, in addition, readings of Gaelic poetry, evenings of traditional music, and a new play in the Irish language , Sceal ar Phadraig by Sean 0 Tuama. 2 The Shakespeare consisted of All the World's a Stage, a presentation by Jack Aronson and Mary Rose McMaster of scenes from the dramatist 's works. It proved to be one of the most attractive items in the Festival. Many offers were made to Mr. Aronson and Miss McMaster to prolong the programme particularly for the benefit of students, but their commitments in the United States prevented them from doing so. The selected Shaw play was Mrs. Warren's Profession. This was presented at the Gaiety Theatre, set and costumed by Bernard Dayde of Paris in aperiod atmosphere. It was directed by Gerard Healy whose wife, the distinguished actress Eithne Dunne (formerly of the Abbey Theatre) shone in the role of Mrs. Warren and earned much praise from the critics. After the Festival the company left for an extensive tour of European capitals and in doing so added considerably to its already well-won laurels. Mr. Hugh Ross Williamson's Teresa of Avila was magnificently served...