Riot and Great Anger: Stage Censorship in Twentieth-Century Ireland (review)

One of the great ironies of the Irish stage in the twentieth century is that its prolonged attempt to overturn the stereotypes of the nineteenth became the basis for a new round of stereotypes—for example, the censored stage thwarting artistry, the unruly audience masquerading as theater-lovers, and the promethean text seeking to disrupt society. In Riot and Great Anger: Stage Censorship in Twentieth-Century Ireland, Joan FitzPatrick Dean takes the reader on a tour de force of theatrical riots, pamphleteering, manipulation, coercion, and "indomitable Irishry" determined to bring to the floorboards something of the vision and promise of the Revival.

Dean demonstrates clearly how funding, politics, religion, and personality—as well as the history of Ireland's long connection to Britain—shape the public character of Irish drama. She provides an engrossing chronicle of the evolving double helix of theater and its forces of expression on one hand, and censorship and its forces of restraint and coercion on the other. She shows how Irish theater production and protest became increasingly self-referential, the dramatic bête noir of one generation becoming part of the received tradition in the next. From The Countess Cathleen (1899) to The Playboy of the Western World (1907), through The Plough and the Stars (1926), and on to Beckett's All That Fall and Endgame (1958), Dean opens up the forces behind the controversies. Irish society was remarkably engaged with the values of theater and the right to expression. The result should not surprise anyone familiar with heated exchange in Irish kitchen, pub, or pitch: in Ireland, the "right" to express oneself rests not simply with the playwright but also with individuals and institutions within society in general and audience members in particular. The philistinism denounced by Yeats so artfully in 1907—"You have disgraced yourselves again!"—is itself part of the performance of Irish culture; but what constitutes philistinism in any given era is often up for debate. Ireland's drama is imbued with a zeal for freedom of expression, but a concensus on what that expression should be and who should have voice has been anything but uniform. The text? The playwright? The director, producer or actors? The theater company? The audience? The critics? Elements of Irish society, including government, political parties, and the church (or churches)? Sean O'Faolain's enumeration of seven censorships—potential censorship by producers, by directors, by government representatives, by actors, by playwrights, by public disruption, and by mob action—receives insightful treatment.

As Dean chronicles the ebb and flow of censorship that challenged the Irish stage from the days when the lord chamberlain's office held sway, through the era of independence, and on to the manipulations imposed by arts organizations, the differing restrictions emerge. Mercantile or commercial censorship might exclude a play because it would jeopardize the letters patent governing the freedom of a theater to operate at all. Aesthetic considerations might trigger the rejection of a particular piece. Political or governmental objections might delay an opening or cancel a run because Dublin Castle would be offended or the emerging state annoyed. Ecclesiastical efforts at censorship often are rooted in a drama's likelihood for harming the church through disrespect for its beliefs, practices, and ministers—or for shortchanging the Irish self-image of national identity and religious faith. Notably, the popular power to censor drama often has hinged on precisely the same two broad issues: national identity and religious faith.

One little-known incident of Irish dramatic censorship occurred not long before the Easter Rising. On February 4, 1914, a planned and well-organized disruption of George A. Birmingham's General John Regan began in Westport, County Mayo. Dean uses the incident to illustrate the multiple layers of action in theater censorship. At issue was the perception that the playwright—a Church of Ireland cleric who had served only recently as rector in Westport—was both ridiculing his former fellow townsmen and denigrating...