Drama: This handsome book from Carysfort Press represents a weighty gathering of the critical observations and evaluations of one of Ireland's most prolific and perceptive drama critics, writes Christina Hunt Mahony.
Not only are Fintan O'Toole's reviews from this paper included, but also earlier reviews from In Dublin, and The Sunday Tribune and from his stint at the New York Daily News. The first and largest section of the book contains reviews of "New Irish Drama", and this is followed by sections on revival productions, key plays in the development of major playwrights, general commentaries on the state of Irish theatre, essays on individual writers, the politics of theatre, and criticism as a profession. The book concludes with an interview with Redmond O'Hanlon, one of its editors. It is a valuable resource for anyone teaching or studying theatre in Ireland today, but there is much here for the avid theatregoer. The earliest piece dates from 1980, the most recent from 2002. Most were written in the 1990s, clearly a prolific decade for O'Toole, who, as it is remarked in the introduction, came slowly and indirectly to drama criticism.
The range and solidity of this corpus are difficult to fault. Reviews of canonical works by Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness and others are here, as are assessments of plays by writers not primarily associated with the theatre, like William Trevor, Joe O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Brendan Kennelly, and Derek Mahon. There are plays we have forgotten, and those we missed.
Here, too, is proof of trends we only intuited - how few women, still, are writing for the theatre (or at least are getting their plays mounted), how strong the trend for writing monologues, or for very small casts and largely in the realist tradition. O'Toole himself, as he discusses in the interview, favours non-realist drama, such as Tom Murphy's The Morning after Optimism.
Several of the columns bear refreshing titles like "I'm glad I was wrong" and "If this is criticism, I want my old job back". These do exactly what it says on the tin. In the latter, although more than a decade old, he incisively locates critical pet peeves that the practitioners should have gone beyond, but still haven't - such as coming to terms with writers who insist on their right to work in more than one genre (see list above), or that pop culture is here to stay and High Art must adapt or die.
I found the interview and the afterword by O'Toole among the most illuminating pages.
O'Toole's tribute to actors - to John Kavanagh as a pioneer in the modern school of physical acting, to the late Donal McCann, whose possession of a dynamic stillness on the stage acted as a counterbalance to such physicality, and to the sheer bravery of Tom Hickey - are succinct masterstrokes. He awards the most powerful transformative artistry to the playwrights in the first instance, though, citing Tom Murphy again, especially the final scenes of both The Gigli Concert and Bailegangaire.
O'Toole's openness and flexibility in drama criticism, traits less in evidence in his broader social, cultural and political essays, are illustrated by his embracing both the poeticism of Sebastian Barry, and the antithetical theatrical talent of Martin McDonagh. Each offers, the critic argues, authentic responses a playwright can have to the complexities of the contemporary world.
The book is filled with gems, and can be read chronologically to give a cogent sense of where Irish theatre is and how far it has come in the past two decades, or enjoyed simply by opening it at random. Here is O'Toole on Tom Mac Intyre's Rise Up Lovely Sweeney: "There are plays that are born onto the stage like sparrows' eggs, small, neat, perfectly formed and delivered with a self-satisfied cheep. There are others that explode like volcanoes, releasing a blaze of fire and a few tons of rubbish. Rise Up Lovely Sweeney is one of these, a dangerous and enlightening play whose burning core is often obscured by seemingly arbitrary distractions.
It is not easily judged or summed up, but it burns with an unmistakable integrity and attempts a voyage that few in the modern theatre would venture". Irish drama has enjoyed a stunning recent flowering. Irish playwrights continue to provide plays which maintain the highest standard of contemporary theatrical achievement and appeal to audiences both at home and abroad. Irish actors have taken their places on the international stage and screen. No less important, but often overlooked in the discussions of periods of cultural richness, is the critical response to artistic production of all kinds.
Irish theatre has been extremely well served by the critical acumen which is found in these pages.
Christina Hunt Mahony is the director of the Center for Irish Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC
Critical Moments: Fintan O'Toole on Modern Irish Theatre. Edited with critical commentary by Julia Furay and Redmond O'Hanlon. Carysfort Press, 399pp. NPG