Political hinterland

Sebastian Barry's new play deposes the monolith of a familiar corrupt Irishpolitician by showing him at his most fragile: within…

Sebastian Barry's new play deposes the monolith of a familiar corrupt Irishpolitician by showing him at his most fragile: within the claustrophobicconfines of his distressed family as he faces tribunals investigating hiscareer. Helen Meany sits in on rehearsal and talks to director MaxStafford-Clark about staging Hinterland

All eyes are on the gravel-voiced figure who gestures towards shadows and strikes heroic poses. Patrick Malahide paces and ruminates, an uncannily familiar old man reflecting on his past, a public figure in private communion with his memories. It's a Saturday morning run-through of Sebastian Barry's new play, Hinterland, author and cast are rapt and the mysterious alchemy of the rehearsal room has taken over. What the director, Max Stafford-Clark described the previous evening as "difficult and challenging" work has taken flight.

Seeing the playwright's intense absorption in the actor's art is a reminder that he once said there was no disappointment in the rehearsal room. No disappointment on days like these, perhaps, which are the culmination of months of concentrated effort. But this play has not come easily: other projects, including a forthcoming novel, Annie Dunne, intervened, and the play script, in its 10th draft since 1999, is covered in pencilled lines. With two weeks to go before opening night, it's still a work in progress, of which Max Stafford-Clark is protective.

It is the third Barry play directed by Stafford-Clark, following the memorable Gate Theatre/Out Of Joint production of The Steward of Christendom with the late Donal McCann, and Our Lady of Sligo, both of which, like much of Barry's work, explored figures from his own family's past. Hinterland is a departure from this pattern. Here the protagonist is a public figure, unlike many of the characters in earlier plays such as Boss Grady's Boys, Prayers of Sherkin, White Woman Street, The Only True History of Lizzie Finn and The Steward of Christendom, who are forgotten figures recovered from the shadows of history by Barry's rare gifts of compassion and empathy.

READ MORE

Hinterland's protagonist Johnny Silvester (Patrick Malahide) is a corrupt political leader facing the second in a series of tribunals investigating his political career in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His moral values, decisions, leadership, finances, lifestyle, behaviour and, above all, his legacy are on trial.

He could, of course, be Charles Haughey - many of the details suggest this - but he is also an emblematic figure, King Lear in a mohair suit, representing a type and generation of Irish male politician that will be instantly recognisable to Abbey audiences.

Under Special Branch protection in his north Dublin mansion, he shuns media attention. His confinement forces him to listen to his estranged wife (Dearbhla Molloy) and his emotionally fragile son (Phelim Drew) as they confront him with their versions of the family's past, with the pain caused by his years of infidelity, as well as parental absence and distance. Sebastian Barry's perennial theme of fathers and sons returns, more urgently now, asking searching questions: can the father learn from his son at this late stage? Can he acquire any wisdom, or will he die bolstered by vanity and self-delusion, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing? Can wife and son forgive him, can he forgive himself?

"There's less reflection here and more dialogue than in Sebastian's other plays," Stafford-Clark says. "While obviously exploring Ireland's immediate past, it's also probing the dark underside of a family, reflecting on the damage this man has done - and the damage done to him. There are echoes of Albee and Eugene O'Neill, of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or A Long Day's Journey. While the lyrical gifts are still there, there's something new in the writing: it lives in the present."

Anticipating how the play will be received in Ireland, Stafford-Clark is aware that opinion here is divided on the legacy of the Haughey era. This ambivalence is reflected in Hinterland, he thinks.

"In terms of a verdict on Johnny Silvester, you could say that the play gives comfort to both houses, to his supporters and his detractors. The moral argument is made - Sebastian seems to me to be a deeply moral writer who is alive to the possibility of immorality. The case for and against this character is made, but both the writing and production take pains to ensure that there are no easy villains. Sebastian as author is the spokesman for each of the characters, so we are given a range of viewpoints, from Silvester's wife to his son, to his mistress, his servant - with whom he exchanges mordant graveside humour - to the ghost of his former colleague, and a student who comes to interview him."

Has the contemporary, very specific setting placed greater demands on this production? "Sebastian writes in a lyrical and richly metaphorical way. My task is to make those scenes concrete, to bring the work on a parallel journey to the one he has indicated in the writing. It may be about a contemporary public figure, but this is not the language of TV naturalism. The director has to make it sound like psychologically accurate dialogue and yet not compromise its poetry. It's not easy to bring off - it's a great challenge to a director and actors."

Stafford-Clark's career in theatre has been moulded by his passion for developing new writing. After his student years at Trinity College Dublin, his first job was at The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, where he was a youthful artistic director in the late 1960s. His years with Joint Stock company, which he co-founded in the 1974, were followed by a fruitful period as artistic director of The Royal Court in London in the 1980s. He is currently artistic director of the touring company Out of Joint, which he founded in 1993 with Sonia Friedman.

Through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he championed plays by young British playwrights with radical political and social themes and brought the work of Caryl Churchill, Sue Townsend, Timberlake Wertenbaker and, most recently, Mark Ravenhill to a wide audience. In 1982, he staged Rita Sue and Bob Too by a teenage mother from Bradford, Andrea Dunbar, who since died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29. Last year his company returned to Dunbar's Bradford estate to examine the changes wrought by Thatcherism and a heroin epidemic. The result is a companion piece, A State Affair, written by Robin Soans as social documentary. Both plays have toured to critical acclaim in Britain and will be playing at Draíocht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown, concurrently with Hinterland at The Abbey.

THE respect Stafford-Clark is accorded by playwrights and fellow directors hinges on his unflagging commitment to new writing. His objective, always, is to create an ensemble of actors and, above all, to foster artistic collaboration. "You have to listen to others. The director is important, yes, but the writer is the senior collaborator. It has to be a collaboration, in my view, but true collaboration is really hard. That's why you have so many authors directing their own work and so many directors staging work by dead playwrights.

"Directors in Russia and Germany are always surprised when we tell them that, in Britain and Ireland, the playwright attends and contributes to rehearsals. In mainland Europe, there is an idea of the director as an auteur, which can become open to abuse. The dominance of the director doesn't give birth to anything, in my view. The exaltation of one of the collaborators into the position of master trivialises the whole."

If anything, Stafford-Clark seems even less likely to covet the role of director-as-guru as he gets older. "You have to turn a difficult corner as the years go by. You begin to be influenced by people who are younger - in my case, directors such as Katie Mitchell and Stephen Daldry. And you learn how to lose arguments, not to have to be right all the time.

"But," he adds, smiling, "choosing which arguments to lose is important."

Hinterland runs at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, from January 30th to February 23rd in an Out Of Joint/Abbey Theatre/Royal National Theatre co-production. Cast includes Patrick Malahide, Dearbhla Molloy, Phelim Drew, Kieran Ahern, James Hayes, Anna Healy and Lucianne McEvoy

Rita, Sue and Bob Too and A State Affair, a double bill directed by Max Stafford-Clark, will run at Draíocht, Blanchardstown, from February 19th to 23rd