As his first play since 2003 to premiere in Ireland opens in Cavan, playwright Frank McGuinness talks about his outsider role with SARA KEATING
WITH HIS THICK curly hair, small, bright eyes, and pink complexion, Frank McGuinness looks like a figure from an Italian Renaissance painting. He gives the impression of being giant, almost bearish, and his rumbling Donegal accent occasionally descends into a growl. However, there is a vulnerability about him too, evident in his unease with the whole interviewing process; indeed in his unease in the world.
Early in the interview, he admits as much, teasing out the varying depths of this disquiet with surprising frankness. "I trust very few people," he confesses, and so his willingness to share his discomfort seems all the more startling. But then McGuinness believes that, as a writer, "it's always better to be uneasy, to be dissatisfied. If you're really seriously writing you are always perplexed, you are always making trouble." Indeed, when he is teaching (he is Writer in Residence at UCD, but teaches a wide variety of literature, too, from Shakespeare to 20th-century theatre), he enjoys the "dissonance", the fact that "the two worlds do not synthesise". The occasion for our meeting is the Irish premiere of McGuinness's play There Came a Gypsy Riding, which was originally produced at London's Almeida Theatre in 2007.
Produced by Cavan-based company Livin' Dred (who will also tour McGuinness's landmark 1985 play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Sommein late October), the production marks the first time a new McGuinness play will have been seen in Ireland since the Abbey Theatre's production of his version of Ibsen's The Wild Duckin 2003. Since then McGuinness has worked on six new productions in England, both original works and new versions of European and Greek classics, with two more productions forthcoming over the next year; a remarkable output. What seems more remarkable, however, has been the virtual invisibility of his work in Irish theatre over the past number of years.
Although McGuinness has “no great polemical pose on it – you go where there is work; that has always been the tradition in my family”, the absence of his work from the major stages in Ireland seems to confirm the “outsider” status that McGuinness recognises in his own personal and working life. One of the important facets of this, he says, is the prevalent attitudes to homosexuality in Irish life. “If you are a gay man of a certain generation you have trained yourself to be an outsider,” he explains, “or to regard yourself as an outsider. And that is what you are: you must never underestimate the sheer historical depth of homophobia in Ireland. And that exists in the theatre as well – perhaps it’s even more pronounced in the theatre, where there is this almost heterosexual panic in case you engage too deeply with gay issues.”
Indeed, the critical reaction to the first production of Observe the Sons of Ulsterat the Abbey Theatre confirmed this attitude: "We didn't shy away from [exploring homosexuality] in the production, but the funny thing was that it didn't cause any controversy: it was just simply not seen. Then there were productions afterwards and they ignored it entirely." It wasn't merely a case of prejudice, then; it was a case of invisibility.
Indeed much of McGuinness's work actually approaches the issue of homosexuality tangentially, aside from the riotous Carthaginians and Gates of Gold, which examines the relationship of partners Michael Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards. In fact, many of his plays, There Came a Gypsy Ridingincluded, anatomise the conventional Irish family unit, from which McGuinness, by virtue of his sexuality, is excluded: ideologically, biologically and even legally. McGuinness is aware of this apparent contradiction in his own work, but this, he says, is what makes him thrive. "I think inevitably I bring a certain detachment to looking at the [conventional family]" he says, "the trials and tribulations of being a family, having kids, losing them, that significance."
He explains what he means directly, in relation to There Came a Gypsy Riding, which explores the after-shocks of suicide within a family: "When I was in my early 30s, the realisation that I wasn't going to have children was a huge knock and a revelation to me. And I think that possibly gives me greater access to what it might feel like to lose a child – not to have been able to have children at all."
Sexuality aside, however, McGuinness insists that “it’s actually a writer’s job to go into areas that you don’t know anything about. That’s where the pleasure of it is. You go in there and you imagine what it would be like and you learn from what you imagine. I love going into unknown areas, writing plays that are not about me, that I cannot stand over.
“It’s not a case of ‘this is true because it happened to me’; rather that this is true because it didn’t happen to me. That’s really what I’m up to. But I don’t really think it has anything to do with my biology or my sexuality. It’s just the way that fiction works; that’s the saving grace of this profession. But if heterosexuality is far more in the focus of my writing – I mean the vast majority of my characters are heterosexual – at the same time I have a right to include within my focus the importance and authenticity of homosexuality within that conventional world. It is that which still disturbs people to some extent: it’s not what they want to see.”
In a similar vein McGuinness insists that the theme of death, which also pervades his work, is often misunderstood.
As he puts it: "I write much more about the loving than the dying. Gypsyis not just a play about suicide. It is just not really a play about those who have died. It's a play about those who go on living: how they have struggled to survive, how they have continued to love. Because ultimately the boy who has died is unknowable. Suicide is a darkly mysterious thing: no matter what they tell you in letters or notes, you cannot know why somebody takes their own life. What it is possible to know is how people cope with that, how people continue with this enormous grief and guilt and sorrow. I am really delighted that it is being produced in Cavan, because that is the reality for so may families of young men in rural Ireland."
In fact the Cavan premiere, a real coup for the continually impressive Livin’ Dred, suits the theme of detachment that pervades our conversation, but it also brings McGuinness closer to his home county of Donegal, which he still remains profoundly attached to, despite more than 30 years in Dublin. “Most people would actually regard me as ‘insider’, in terms of the record of my work in established theatre in Ireland. But the truth is that I have never really felt at ease there. But then again I have never really felt at ease anywhere, and maybe that is to do with my sexuality, but maybe it’s just to do with my character.
“Or maybe it’s to do with the fact that I’m from the dark county of Donegal, and we are never at ease anywhere. I always tell people when I’m working abroad if you want to see what Donegal looks like to the rest of Ireland go look at a map that shows the railway routes of Ireland and Donegal is Siberia, with one difference: there’s a train that goes through Siberia. I’m not going to say we were neglected, but we have always been very much alone. I wouldn’t underestimate how important that last statement is to me.”
There Came a Gypsy Ridingruns at the Ramor Theatre, Virginia, Co Cavan, until Sept 19 then tours. Observe the Sons of Ulstertours to Dundalk (Oct 28, 29, 30, 31), Roscommon(Nov 3, 4), Virginia, Co Cavan (Nov 6, 7, 8) Longford (Nov 10, 11), Mullingar (Nov 14, 15), Drogheda (Nov 17, 18), Castleblaney (Nov 20, 21)
THREE WE HAVEN'T SEEN
Three Frank McGuinness plays which premiered in the UK to rave reviews but have yet to be staged here:
HELEN
The Globe 2009
“the jewel in the Globe’s crown this season”
– Evening Standard
SPEAKING LIKE MAGPIES
Royal Shakespeare Company 2005
“dazzling coups de theatre and fine writing. . . oblique, impressionistic, literary”
– Guardian
OEDIPUS
The National Theatre 2008
“a mini-opera of horror and suffering”
– Times
