Greek Tragedy and the Celtic Tiger: The Politics of Literary Allusion in Marina Carr's Ariel

Abstract

Greek Tragedy and the Celtic Tiger: The Politics of Literary Allusion in Marina Carr’s Ariel ISABELLE TORRANCE ARIEL, a play by contemporary Irish playwright Marina Carr, premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in October 2002, in a production directed by Conall Morrison, during the Dublin Theatre Festival. It is one of a number of plays written by Carr that are inspired by Greek tragedy, the most famous of which is her earlier By the Bog of Cats . . . , loosely based on Euripides’ Medea. First produced in 1998, By the Bog of Cats . . . went on to become a major international success, with productions starring Academy Award Winner Holly Hunter at the San Jose Repertory Theatre in 2001 and at Wyndhams Theatre in London during the winter season of 2004–2005. The play has now been translated into several languages. More recently Carr has returned to the Greeks after a hiatus, writing Phaedra Backwards, which was produced at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton in 2011, and Hecuba, which premiered at the Swan Theatre in Stratfordupon -Avon in 2015. Both plays received mixed reviews. Carr’s Ariel, however, received overwhelmingly negative reviews, and within the ever-increasing volume of scholarship on Marina Carr’s plays, Ariel is often referenced only briefly, if at all, and is infrequently addressed in its own right. Carr was interviewed about the play by Melissa Sihra prior to Ariel’s completion. Later, Cathy Leeney discussed Ariel’s reflections on the relationship between human beings and the planet. Then Rhona Trench approached the play through the lens of Kristeva’s theory of abjection in a chapter of her book on Carr, while Zoraide Rodrigues Carrasco de Mesquita observed some broad similarities and differarion 25.3 winter 2018 ences between Ariel and Greek tragedy and drew connections with the essay entitled Ariel by Uruguayan author José Enrique Rodó. At the same time, Danine Farquharson briefly offered a negative scholarly analysis of Ariel, concurring with negative reviews of the performance.1 Among the reviews of the 2002 production of Ariel, Marianne McDonald, a leading expert on Greek tragedy and its modern adaptations in Ireland, has written the most detailed and informative piece.2 McDonald notes that some of the director’s decisions impacted negatively on the production, compounding problems in the performance of an already difficult play. As McDonald so insightfully observes, one of the challenges posed by the play is its plethora of literary echoes ranging from the Old Testament, to Hamlet and Faust, and into contemporary Irish dramas by Martin McDonagh and Sebastian Barry, all in addition to the collection of Greek tragedies on which the main plot elements are based. Although such complexity of allusion seems to have contributed to the difficulties of performance, I argue here that, as a text, Ariel rewards re-reading precisely because of its sophisticated intertextual depth and breadth and for its accompanying reflections on Irish society at the turn of the millennium. In addition to the primary framework of Greek tragedy, I discuss references to the Bible, to Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Eugene O’Neill, Sylvia Plath and Pier Paolo Pasolini, on which rest a series of weighty themes and images. Central thematic concerns of family, religion, and politics are adopted from the Greek models and transposed into a twenty-first century Irish context. First, I will outline how Ariel announces itself as a complex intertextual work, not only through its obvious engagement with Greek tragedy but also through the multiple literary allusions created by its title. In three subsequent sections, I discuss how the themes of politics, family dynamics, and religion have been adapted from Greek tragedy and made pertinent to an Irish audience. Finally, I offer some conclusions on the relationship between Ariel, Greek tragedy, and the Celtic Tiger phenomenon. greek tragedy and the celtic tiger 70 1. what’s in a name? from iphigenia to ariel: aeschylus, isaiah, shakespeare and plath ARIEL presents an Irish couple, Fermoy and Frances Fitzgerald , and their three children, Ariel, Elaine and Stephen. The eldest daughter Ariel disappears on her sixteenth birthday. The disappearance coincides with Fermoy’s meteoric rise and success as a politician. It is eventually discovered that Fermoy had actually murdered his...