THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS. To 29 January.
London
THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS
by Sean O' Casey
Barbican Theatre To 29 January 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 29 Jan 2.30pm
BSL Signed 24 Jan
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7515
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 January
A play too rarely seen in a production with some strong qualities.Sean O' Casey wrote plays over forty years up to his death; his three major dramas all came in the first five of those years. The Plough and the Stars (a reference to the Irish nationalist standard) is the most diffuse, least seen of the trio but Ben Barnes' Abbey Theatre revival, visiting the Barbican, shows how extraordinarily powerful it is.
Set among characters in a Dublin tenement during the 1916 Easter Rising against British control, the view is downbeat. As an off-stage speaker (here a giant shadow-figure curling Lenin-like as a different actor speaks the lines) orates about the glories of bloodshed we see a series of petty conflicts among O' Casey's characters who take time off from politics to wet their whistles in a prostitute-patrolled pub.
Later, the battle for liberation takes place offstage as the tenement dwellers loot local shops. Yet the women show unexpected moments of generosity when faced with suffering; O' Casey's three major plays all show politics bringing bereavement to women and their strength in the name of life and love.
Barnes' production isn't ideal. Parts need more tonal variety, but even more the production has to fight an over-assertive, unatmospheric set. Heaps of rubbish surround the stage, pulling focus from the action. There are unhelpfully long walks to the main acting area. And an increasingly dominant element is a backing panel of glass panes which suffer the anger of drinkers and fighters.
This encourages Barnes' tendency to line-up characters facing towards the audience. Maybe an expressionist element's wanted, but it works against the human relationships. And the final image, as characters dead and alive enter to face the audience with challengingly stony expressions recalls those confrontational 1970s political drama endings where the cast's closing glare was supposed to encourage revolution tomorrow if not tonight.
There's still more than enough to make this play's rare outing a valuable opportunity. And the closing act, where Dublin's grey poverty has become a reddened war-zone hell and ambitious young wife Nora a maddened widow in white, trembling silently in her wedding-icing dress, provides a fine, intense climax.
Fluther Good: Eamon Morrissey
Peter Flynn: John Kavanagh
Mrs Gogan: Olwen Fouere
The Young Covey: Anthony Brophy
Nora Clitheroe: Cathy Belton
Bessie Burgess: Catherine Byrne
Jack Clitheroe: Owen McDonnell
Captain Brennan: Conor Delaney
Moliser: Laura Murphy
Bar Tender: Simon O' Gorman
Rosie Redmond: Amelia Crowley
Figure in the Window: Mark Lambert/Bill Murphy
Lieutenant Langon: Aonghus Og McAnally
Corporal Stoddart: Aidan Turner
Sergeant Tinley: Bill Murphy
Director: Ben Barnes
Designer: Francis O' Connor
Lighting: Rupert Murray
Sound: Cormac Carroll
Composer: Paddy Cuneen
Assistant director: Andrea Ainsworth
Assistant lighting: Kevin McFadden
Voice: Andrea Ashworth
2005-01-20 11:25:24