FROM THE ARCHIVES:The premiere of John B. Keane's play, The Field, was staged in the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 1965 but the reasons for its success with audiences were not immediately apparent to the anonymous Irish Timescritic who signed him or herself JJ. – JOE JOYCE
John B. Keane presents a terrible problem to the critic. By all the canons he is more of a task for the social psychologist than for the student of present-day theatre. Whatever his technical merits and demerits (and both are considerable), they have little relevance to the 1960s.
But this is only the theory and, theories apart, he has established an extraordinary relationship with his audience. By the end of the last act of “The Field” no one present seemed able to duck any of the melodramatic punches thrown-no matter that they were heavily signalled. Whether this is the audience’s fault or Keane’s I will not attempt to analyse.
The play explores the national non-informer syndrome. A murder is committed. Everyone knows the village bully and his dim son done it. Nobody tells. The people are harangued by the clergy and by the law. Conscience continues part of the individual rather than the collective heritage. The play, which adopts the expected devices of irony and symbolism (the death of an ass/the buying of silence/the denial of Christ) in its construction, takes far too long to come to its dramatic point and then deals with the theme in a sadly stock manner. The pace seldom flags, however – the traditional comic developers of cadgeing, cowardice and impiety see to this.
Some of the humour is weak but the imagery is more controlled than in previous Keane plays and in places it is striking in the extreme. The acting and production are well nigh without blemish. I particularly liked Arthur O’Sullivan as the crafty auctioneer, Robert Carlile Jnr as the bully’s son and Seamus Healy and Marjorie Hogan as the rustic husband and wife act. Eamon Keane did well with “The Bird” O’Donnell (the character part) and Ronnie Masterson coped well with the somewhat thankless task of the auctioneer’s emotional wife. Something was lacking from Barry Cassin’s grand denunciation from the pulpit of the villagers’ “abominable silence” in the part of the Bishop. Perhaps the cares of directing the play had left him insufficient time to build this set piece.
Ray McAnally was cast in the central role of blackguard and murderer. This is by no means an easy part. Keane has tried to do more than take the stock character from the Victorian examples. This process of character development is hindered by the constant changes from bullying to pub humour and then to Synge pure lyricism. McAnally has done well under the circumstances and has turned in a very “actor like” performance. It is inconsistent but gripping.
One might say the same about the play as a whole. The settings which are designed by Noel McMahon and executed by Brian Collins, must be mentioned. Particularly that of the field of the title in which (and over which) the murder takes place. It is, in addition, beautifully lit.
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