Violence on the Abbey Theatre Stage: The National Project and the Critic; Two Case Studies

Violence on the Abbey Theatre Stage: The National Project and the Critic; Two Case Studies CATHY LEENEY During the early decades of the twentieth century in Ireland, the privileging of nationalist values, and the concomitant exclusion of women from active roles in violent struggle (as well as the erasure of the contributions they did make (see McCoole) meant that energy was diverted away from the dramatic representation of revolutionary changes in the roles of women in the family, in politics , and in society. It also meant that women's interrogation of violence effectively was censored at a number of levels: by producers, by critics, by audiences. Such censorship, in hindsight, is visible in the readings and misreadings of plays by women. Much of women's work did not reach the stage of production. Producers and directors edited or skewed certain dramatic texts during the process of rehearsal. Critics and audiences saw, in certain cases, mystery and ineptitude where dramaturgical daring or experiment was before them. This argument is not for the reading of plays within the cultural and political contexts of their wriring and first production. It is an argument against judging plays by their initial reception in these very contexts, and in favour of fe-reading plays with due recognition of the reader's present historical moment, culturally, politically, and theatrically. The distance of history may, in terms of the theatrical and cultural significance and potential of a play text, clarify as well as mystify. Audiences for the premieres of new plays sport a variety of blinkers. When a play such as Dorothy Macardle's The Old Man, or Teresa Deevy's Katie Roche did make it to the stage, audience expectations, the reputation of the author, or current conventions of staging or of characterisation skewed critical responses, so that critics reflected back conservative values associated with the maintenance of existing power structures in society and culture. These critical responses contributed to the already huge difficulties and obstacles faced by playwrights who were determined to write as they desired, and, subModern Drama, 47:4 (Winter 2004) 585 586 CATHY LEENEY sequently, to the obstacles faced by directors and performers determined to represent as they desired. These are two case studies that emerged from among a number of examples of misleading critical responses - misleading when viewed with the benefit of distance. I encountered them during my research into Irish women playwrights working in the first decades of the twentieth century. The first case study concerns how a play ends, and the second the playwright's creation of character, and the audience's reception of it. These two plays contrast with one another in a number of ways. The Old Man by Dorothy Macardle is known only tltrough the responses to it in newspapers and magazines; the script has been lost. Yet a descriptive style of reviewing helps us to gain an outline of the narrative, and clear indications of the waysin which the play was found wanting by its first audiences. Katie Roche by Teresa Deevy is a very different matter. The text was published twice, in Famous Plays [935-[936 (along with plays by Clifford Odets, Dodie Smith, Rodney Ackland, and others) and in Three Plays by Deevy. Subsequent to its premiere at the Abbey Theatre in 1936, Katie Roche toured the United Kingdom and the United States. It played again at the Abbey in 1949 under the direclion of Ria Mooney, who also directed it for the Abbey at the Queen's Theatre in 1954 (Murray 165). Since then it was revived at the Abbey under Joe Dowling's direction in 1975 (165), and was seen again at the Peacock Theatre in 1994 directed by Judy Friel. The play has attracted a good deal of critical attention (see Murray). Because of the number of productions at intervals it is possible to trace differences in its reception, which point to ways in which theatrical conventions of characterisation, current at a particular time, shape audiences' or a critic's perceptions of persons and behaviours represented on stage. In the case of Katie Roche, changing perceptions and expectations of womanhood have been central to differences in the reception of the play...