Theater: Quietly at Irish Rep uncovers old wounds
It seems that it takes several decades after most large national traumas for artists to produce high quality reflections on them. Germany is only now examining the Holocaust artistically. In the USA 9/11 still has few quality reflections (Paul Greenglass' taut 2006 film United 93 is one, the ending almost unbearable), and analysis of the US in the turbulent 1960s is still remarkably short on high quality art (the novels American Pastorale by Philip Roth and Rabbit Redux by John Updike do it well, see my reviews). "The Troubles", the bloody Northern Ireland conflict between Catholics and Protestants that peaked in the 1970s but lingered to the end of the century, should be excellent fodder for artistic reflection. Paul Greenglass succeeded in his characteristic docu-drama, hand held camera manner in the 2001 Bloody Sunday.. This conflict has all the qualities that should make for compelling drama--religious intolerance, centuries-old resentments, hate of foreigners vs. self--all superimposed on that peculiar Irish quality of deep depression and victimhood mixed with story-telling, reactive celebration and escapism (via emigraion and substance abuse). James Joyce and the brilliant contemporary author Patrick McCabe (read Winterwood or The Butcher Boy) certainly plumb these characteristics.
Quietly, a new play by Northern Ireland's Owen McCafferty presented by NYC's Irish Repertory Theater, tries to examine The Troubles via three characters in a bar, decades later. The play was lauded as a production of The Abbey Theater in Dublin, and at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013. It involves the reunion of two middle aged men, one Catholic, the other Protestant, who as teenagers were both involved in an extreme act of violence. They meet in 1998 in the same bar that was the site of a bombing in the 1970's. The play examines guilt, remorse, youth vs. age as general themes, rather than focusing on the history or details of the conflict. All this is a good idea, and men talking in a bar is always great for psychoanalysis (see The Iceman Cometh). But I was not really impressed with the playwright's use of Hemingway-style blunt talk at the expense of poetry..the dialogue never really seemed to soar, or raise my pulse rate. Nor did it make me reflect very much. The acting was fine (Declan Conlon and Patrick O'Kane were the protagonists) but the play stayed on the ground, firmly.
There was an interesting sub-theme, in which one of the characters challenged the other to experience his memories emotionally, rather than clinically, by remembering the exact details of the chairs and decor in the bar when he threw the bomb years ago. This reminded me of recovered memory psychoanalysis, that often relies on remembering small details as an avenue to more profound feeling. This technique was used famously by Claude Lanzmann in his classic documentary Shoah (1985) when Treblinka survivor Abraham Bomba is first analytic and numb, then overwhelmed by his memories after being asked to recount small details and show exactly how he cut the hair of pre-gas chamber Jewish women when he worked as a barber there: take the time to watch the excerpt here: the peak is at time point 7:33.
I wish Quietly had gotten more in depth into this issue of repression of past trauma, and how we cope with this. The Troubles is really a perfect canvas for this. But this play stayed too much on the surface, and I await a more profound exploration.
Quietly, a new play by Northern Ireland's Owen McCafferty presented by NYC's Irish Repertory Theater, tries to examine The Troubles via three characters in a bar, decades later. The play was lauded as a production of The Abbey Theater in Dublin, and at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013. It involves the reunion of two middle aged men, one Catholic, the other Protestant, who as teenagers were both involved in an extreme act of violence. They meet in 1998 in the same bar that was the site of a bombing in the 1970's. The play examines guilt, remorse, youth vs. age as general themes, rather than focusing on the history or details of the conflict. All this is a good idea, and men talking in a bar is always great for psychoanalysis (see The Iceman Cometh). But I was not really impressed with the playwright's use of Hemingway-style blunt talk at the expense of poetry..the dialogue never really seemed to soar, or raise my pulse rate. Nor did it make me reflect very much. The acting was fine (Declan Conlon and Patrick O'Kane were the protagonists) but the play stayed on the ground, firmly.
There was an interesting sub-theme, in which one of the characters challenged the other to experience his memories emotionally, rather than clinically, by remembering the exact details of the chairs and decor in the bar when he threw the bomb years ago. This reminded me of recovered memory psychoanalysis, that often relies on remembering small details as an avenue to more profound feeling. This technique was used famously by Claude Lanzmann in his classic documentary Shoah (1985) when Treblinka survivor Abraham Bomba is first analytic and numb, then overwhelmed by his memories after being asked to recount small details and show exactly how he cut the hair of pre-gas chamber Jewish women when he worked as a barber there: take the time to watch the excerpt here: the peak is at time point 7:33.
I wish Quietly had gotten more in depth into this issue of repression of past trauma, and how we cope with this. The Troubles is really a perfect canvas for this. But this play stayed too much on the surface, and I await a more profound exploration.
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