Rough Magic Theatre Company

New Irish Plays and Adaptations, 2010-2018

Hilary Fannin, Arthur Riordan, Sonya Kelly, Shane Mac an Bhaird, Morna Regan, Ellen Cranitch, Patrick Lonergan

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350119796
• eBook ISBN: 9781350119819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Celebrating the work of one of Ireland's most daring theatre companies, this anthology gathers five plays by established and emerging playwrights. They include vibrant new adaptations of the world classics Peer Gynt and Phaedra alongside vital new dramas that explore issues of urgent contemporary concern, such as sex and sexuality, emigration and climate change. With contributions from Hilary Fannin and Ellen Cranitch, Arthur Riordan, Sonya Kelly, Morna Regan, and Shane Mac an Bhaird – as well as a foreword from Booker Prize-winning novelist Anne Enright - this book is an exciting snapshot of contemporary Irish playwriting. The book operates as a showcase of outstanding new Irish playwriting, blending work by established and emerging playwrights, and also acts as a celebration of one of Ireland's most important theatre companies. And it includes new plays that demonstrate Rough Magic's consistent willingness to push the boundaries of Irish theatre, both formally and thematically, in plays that cover such topics as sex and sexuality, emigration and climate change. This edition contains a foreword by Anne Enright, Booker prize winner and Laureate of Irish Fiction.

Peer Gynt

Arthur Riordan

Arthur Riordan is a playwright and actor, and a founder member of Rough Magic. Arthur’s writing for Rough Magic includes the stage adaptation of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; the book and lyrics for the musical The Train (music by Bill Whelan); book and lyrics for the musical Improbable Frequency (music by Conor Kelly and Sam Park) which won three Irish Times Theatre Awards, including Best Production; and a one-man show, The Emergency Session. Arthur wrote the libretto for Andrew Synnott’s Dubliners opera (for Opera Theatre Company and Wexford Festival Opera – nominated for Best Opera at the Irish Times Theatre Awards); a radio play, Love Me?! for RTE Drama on One, nominated for the Prix Europa; a stage adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s Slattery’s Sago Saga (for The Performance Corporation – nominated for best new play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards), and two collaborations with Des Bishop: Rap Éire (for Bickerstaffe) and Shooting Gallery (for Bedrock Productions).

There is a long and honourable tradition, the morality tale, in which the protagonist indulges in plenty of juicy immorality before finally deciding to walk the straight and narrow. The story of Peer Gynt is very much in this tradition, with the bonus that it is also a cautionary tale about the dangers of fantasising, which manages to raise the literary fantasy bar to dizzy new heights.

Peer Gynt is the story of a feckless, self-obsessed fantasist, and when Rough Magic produced my adaptation of the play for the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2011, it seemed an appropriate story for the times we were in, given that Ireland was just then emerging bruised and chastened from its own period of self-regarding fecklessness. Now, as I write, with large segments of Western civilisation indulging in what seems to be an orgy of self-delusion (and with trolls playing a significant part!) the play may be more pertinent than ever. More likely though, its relevance is timeless.

Like the Boyg, the nebulous creature Peer tries to do battle with, the play isn’t easily pinned down. Peer may be unreliable, but so is the world around him. You can never be sure whether the events before your eyes are being presented as reality, myth or delusion. Petty rural feuds are given the same credence, and the same importance, as supernatural visitations. Episodes that we already witnessed are later embroidered and mythologised, but they didn’t feel quite real the first time either. This all-pervasive ambiguity is one of the things I found so attractive about Peer Gynt.

Another, related attraction was that it’s a verse play. Not sophisticated, decorous blank verse either, but the robust, unruly and unequivocally rhyming verse of a ballad or a nursery rhyme. I think this verse element is crucial to the play’s energy and its sense of unreality. The rhythmic, heightened language makes the fantastical elements and abrupt gear-changes somehow easier to assimilate. I’d worked in rhyme a few times previously – the rapping of The Emergency Session, a song here and there for plays and sketches, and then the musical Improbable Frequency – but here was a chance to really stretch my capabilities on a large canvas, without having to sweat the plot. I found this aspect of the adaptation really pleas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword Anne Enright
• Introduction Patrick Lonergan
• Phaedra Hilary Fannin and Ellen Cranitch
• Peer Gynt Arthur Riordan
• The House Keeper Morna Regan
• How to Keep an Alien Sonya Kelly
• Melt Shane Mac an Bhaird
• Permissions
• Copyright