Challenging Myth and Tradition: National/Cultural Identity and the Irish Theatrical Canon

Challenging Myth and Tradition: National/Cultural Identity and the Irish Theatrical Canon BRIAN SINGLETO N The constructions of national and culturaJ identities in Ireland have been contemporaneous and, in the Irish psyche, synonymous with one another. The Irish theatre canon at the tum of the last century, engineered by W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and I.M. Synge, illter alia,came at the height of modernism but harked back to a pre-modem and pre-colonial Gaelic native culture in an attempt to establish a peculiarly Irish body of literature and drama. The simultaneous interest in the revival of the Irish language joined with Yeats to form part of a cultural resistance to British Home Rule and the struggle for independence . Theatre used as allegory (as in Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan, for instance) for such a struggle made the medium highly' politicized. Subsequently , as a new nation emerged and was forged, the drama from that early period became enshrined as the new national culture. In particular, in establishing an alternative.to the colonial representation of the Irish, such drama also established a tradition of theatrical myths, an agrarian Celtic twilight, and an urban revolutionary politics. But as practised by Yeats, theatrical myth making absented itself from contemporary realities and carved out a cultural niche for Protestants and ("West Briton Kiltartanry"') who had been displaced politically by revolutionary upheavals. The latter, as enshrined in the way O'Casey was performed, turned out to be still more damaging, establishing a comfortable tradition of ignoring the critique of Romantic nationalism and effectively replicating the old colonial system, leading to urban deprivation, that it produced . This indeed was satirized by Shaw, in John Bull's Other Island (1904), and in the early O'Casey plays - but to perform such plays in the 1920S would have been cultural suicide. G.N. Reddin was typical in attacking them as the cultural construction of the colonial project: "The spirit of the Abbey Theatre was Cromwellian ... This Kiltanan jargon, and the venerable authors of it were the creation of the same foreign biased mind as evolved, for the same political motives, that mirth-provoking, buffoon-stage Irish pat'" Modern Drama, 43:2 (Summer 2000) 265 266 BRIAN SINGLETON From this mind-set evolved a cosy mythologized tradition of jolly drunks and happy whores - into which even John Bull came to be insened in a Boucicault -like performance mode - as seen in the traditional presentation of O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars (1926) and in the comic treatment of Lennox Robinson's characters' blind obsession with the respectability of appearance in The Whiteheaded Boy (1916). Such send-ups, with complete disregard for the authors' intentions, betray an unwillingness to confront the horrors of revolution and its aftermath. Finding the humour in the tragic situation and exploiting it created what some might call an Irish acting tradition. It reveals a desire to avoid suffering and denies catharsis, all of which came to characterize, through such caricature, a postcolonial stage Irishman. And thus a long and unchanging theatrical tradition was established, one that bolstered nationalist sentiment and sentimentality and which came to be challenged and interrogated only in the last decade of the twentieth century as the new nation of Ireland shook off adolescence. In 1998, economic analyses flagged Ireland as the fastest-growing economy not only in Europe but, with the downturn in Asian markets, throughout the world. The first woman and first "socialist" president was elected in 1990, the year that also saw Ireland establish its place on the sponing world stage in World Cup football's Italia 90. Subsequent popular cultural successes (the national soccer team 's relative successes in international competitions; gold medals in cycling, swimming, and athletics World Cups and Olympic games; seven wins at the Eurovision Song Contest, including fOUT in the 19905, as well as Riverdance, a spin-off dance spectacular that has achieved global triumph ) have all created a pop culture feel-good factor in the country. Judicious use of large European Union capital grants led to increased investment, employment, and the concomitant upturn in leisure activities and spending on consumer goods in the late 1990s. Unemployment fell, and, while...