In his 1955 article âThe Future of the Irish Theatreâ Gabriel Fallon gave a gloomy prognosis, lamenting the fact that the Abbey, âa theatre begun in poetry should find itself after fifty years deeply sunk in the pit of naturalismâ.1 While he claimed that his essay was written âin the optative moodâ it is the sense of frustration at the failure of Irish theatre as a whole that is most striking, for as there was âlittle sign [âŚ] of the promise of lively new dramatistsâ the theatre seemed condemned to âa further term of naturalismâ as the dominant form of Irish theatre.2 Fallon was writing from the perspective of conservative Catholicism, his hope being that naturalism would be replaced by verse drama of a spiritual nature, but his analysis captures a more widespread sense that âa spiraling entropy [âŚ] had existed since the mid-1920sâ and the national theatre was its paradigmatic expression.3
Fallon focused on the Abbey because âthe Irish theatre is the Abbey Theatreâ,4 but as Ernest Blythe, the theatreâs managing director from 1941 to 1967, âdidnât want anything that wasnât a three wall setâ,5 the result was an âoleaginous conformityâ.6 Although this lack of innovation was resisted by Ria Mooney, the Abbeyâs artistic director from 1948 to 1963, she acknowledged that often the only set decision was where to place the door and, indeed, recalled that âmany of the plays were so monotonously alike that I honestly canât remember even the names of many of themâ.7 However, despite this creative inertia at the heart of the theatrical establishment, there was a resistance to formulaic naturalism. The Pike theatre produced Beckettâs Waiting for Godot in 1955 and in 1957 gave the Irish premier of Tennessee Williamsâs sexually outspoken The Rose Tattoo, which led to the arrest of the theatreâs director, Alan Simpson, and ultimately the closure of the theatre itself. But although the Pike, the 37 Theatre Club and above all the Gate, refused to conform to the naturalism which was âthe signature tune of Irish theatreâ,8 the reality, as the Gateâs co-founder MicheĂĄl Mac LiammĂłir observed in 1959, was that âthe search goes on for those authors who will deliver [Irish theatre] from the cumbersome drawingroom and library set, [âŚ] from the limitations of those literal and representative surroundingsâ.9 In the same year, the playwright and critic Thomas Kilroy noted that âDuring the last twenty years few Irish dramatists have been in any way exciting technicallyâ and so the challenge was to âcreate an environment which will help to inspire new Irish plays and keep playwrights alive to the experiments and advances of modern stage-craftâ.10 The mainstream of Irish theatre flowed through the 1950s as sluggishly as the Liffey.
The reasons for this state of relative stasis are clear. As noted by Nicholas Grene, âIn so far as Irish drama is centrally concerned with the explanation and interpretation of Ireland there is a bias towards the representational within itâ and this had a specific impact on Irish women as dramatic form underwrote state policy in an effective denial of female agency.11 As Melissa Sihra argues, âThe recurring interior of the home on the Irish stage has come to signify an enduring association and conflation of family and nationâ12 in which, as in Article 41 of the Irish Constitution, womenâs domestic life âgives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achievedâ and therefore they âshall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the homeâ.13 Any dramatic denials of this orthodoxy were largely suppressed during the autarchic 1930s and 1940s, when the stage was expected to present an indivisible people united within a common culture.14 However by 1958âwhen the parlous state of the economy established emigration as a fact of Irish life that fragmented familiesâstate policy on the family and its theatrical confirmation were under strain. The conclusion of T.K. Whitakerâs 1958 Programme for Economic Expansion was that âIt would be well to shut the door on the past and to move forwardâ; an injunction that applied to more than the economy.15 Irish society was changing and its theatre needed to engage with that fact. Indeed, as argued by Fintan OâToole, âFrom the late 1950s onwards, âIrelandâ as a single, simple notion which might underlie and give coherence to a work of theatre began to seep away [âŚ] The theatre of naturalism [âŚ] became virtually impossible.â16
Cultural change, however, was rarely as absolute and, as Raymond Williams observed in Marxism and Literature (1977), nearly always involves a mix of dominant, residual and emergent formsâa factor that would lend complexity to Irish theatre over the next several decades. But there was a sense that Irish society was in a state of upheaval and Brian Friel wanted to dramatize that moment: âI would like to write a play that would capture the peculiar spiritual, and indeed material, flux that this country is in at the moment.â17
Frielâs comment was made in the course of a discussion published in the Irish Times on 12 February 1970 whose title, âThe Future of Irish Dramaâ, echoed that of Fallonâs article some fifteen years earlierâand again naturalism was the issue. It was not, however, a case of a frustrated yearning for a poetic theatre, rather it was a search for, in Seamus Heaneyâs phrase, a form âadequate to our predicamentâ.18 Hugh Leonard, who participated in the discussion, along with Friel and John B. Keane, identified the question of form as central, noting that âBrian Friel and I share a desperate search for form [âŚ] Irish playwrights as a whole are trying to break away from a naturalistic formâ.19
Friel did not respond to Leonard on this point and appeared to refute it in his 1972 statement that â[m]atter is our concern, not formâ.20 But his 1974 comment to Seamus Deane, âIâm as sick of the naturalistic style as Iâm sure you areâ, makes clear that he was significantly concerned with the dominance of naturalism, but in a way which sought its modification rather than its outright rejection.21 The two plays that ushered in contemporary Irish drama, Hugh Leonardâs Stephen D. (1962) and Frielâs Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), were staged at the Gate theatre during the Dublin Theatre Festivalâa major influence on the development of Irish theatre through its introduction of international drama. Kilroy noted that they had many traditional features in terms of situations and characters, âbut the sensibility of both writers is what is striking: modern, alive to the dislocating perspectives of the mid-century and the fluidity of expression possible on stage with modern lighting, design and directionâ.22
Stephen D., an adaptation of James Joyceâs novels concerning Stephen Daedalus, was described by Leonard as âa very flexible piece of stage materialâ but one which was clearly non-naturalistic as, in the first production, âthe dialogue between Stephen and the President was delivered as they walked down into the auditorium and completed a circuit of the stalls, during which time the house lights were switched onâ.23 Frielâs play is seemingly less radical in staging the kitchen set with all its resonance of âPeasant Qualityââthe criterion of dramatic value in the Literary Revivalâbut it then fragments it. In addition to the kitchen, the set also contains a bedroom, which are lit according to whether they are the location of action, and â[t]hese two areas â kitchen and Garâs bedroom â occupy more than two-thirds of the stage. The remaining portion is fluid: in Episode I for example, it represents a room in Senator Dooganâs homeâ. The protagonist is also divided, on-stage as Public Gar and Private Gar, the latter is âthe man within [âŚ] the secret thoughtsâ. When the play concludes with Garâs response to the question as to why he is emigrating, âI donât know. IâIâI donât knowâ, Friel articulates the uncertainty of both his character, the society and its theatrical expression, poised between traditional themes and modern forms.24
Friel then interrogates these themesâemigration, generational conflict, the clash of tradition and modernityâthrough the disaggregation ...