Reviewed by: The Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes by José Lanters Kathleen M. Heininge The Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes, by José Lanters, pp. 280. Cork: Cork University Press, 2018. $45.00. All too often, monographs on particular playwrights focus exclusively on text, with perhaps some biographical readings, and only superficially explore the cultural and theatrical moment in which that playwright worked. José Lanters, recognizing the complexities of Thomas Kilroy's body of work and its critical reception, elucidates a new perspective on Kilroy by delving into various drafts, correspondences, interviews with theater practitioners who worked on the plays, and reviews of those productions—as well as considering the historical and theatrical moment from which the plays derive. Effectively filling a gap in Irish drama studies, Lanters has given us a work that provides not only insightful critical summaries of Kilroy's plays, but also situates those plays within their literary, political, and social contexts. In doing so, she has helped us to understand some of Kilroy's contemporaries as well. Kilroy has often been considered a difficult playwright, sometimes seen as too pedantic and not theatrical enough, or too obscure, and certainly controversial. He is the first playwright to include the word "sex" in the title of an Irish play (Tea and Sex and Shakespeare, 1976), and among the first to explore the problems within a homophobic but simultaneously homoerotic masculinity in Irish culture (The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, 1969). He challenges the political narrative of pure nationalism and anticolonialism in both The O'Neill (1995) and Double Cross (1994), to the discomfiture of both Irish and English audiences and critics. And he imaginatively shifts the well-worn and nearly talismanic stories of Oscar Wilde—in both The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (1997) and in My Scandalous Life (2005)—and Matt Talbot (Talbot's Box, 1998). Kilroy has always, as Lanters explains, "challenged absolutes, in both form and content." As a practitioner, he has consistently refused to "take absolute control of his plays," allowing other practitioners to speak into the final result, "acknowledging the power and validity of sometimes widely diverging interpretations of his work, as well [End Page 144] as the possibility of failure. Kilroy demonstrates this openness in his plays by presenting us with the consequences of absolutism. "If his characters are often absolutists and extremists—nationalist, fascist, religious zealots, self-absorbed visionaries," Lanters observes, "it is precisely this quality of certainty and single-mindedness that places them beyond humanity, rendering them capable of great things but also making them 'monstrous' and destructive of both self and others," exposing their (and our) humanity. We recognize our own failings in these characters, the more easily because they are shown both as extreme and as understandable in their "inconstancies." Lanters organizes her discussion less in terms of chronology and more in terms of Kilroy's thematic interests: nationalism and identity, gender and sexuality, art and mysticism. Of course, there is considerable overlap, as Kilroy does not limit such themes to particular plays. Nonetheless, grouping the plays this way allows Lanters to tie the plays to historical changes taking place in Ireland, demonstrating the currency of Kilroy's works not only owing to societal shifts but also to stylistic shifts in the world of drama. Where, for example, The O'Neill gives us a somewhat sympathetic reading of Hugh O'Neill being conflicted between the opposing forces of "the Gaelic clan system, his respect for English culture, and his aspirations for a united Catholic Europe," the depiction of O'Neill trying to bridge that conflict in the face of others' absolutism is placed firmly in the context of the conflict in Northern Ireland (and certainly remains relevant as an object lesson for American politics today). Christ, Deliver Us! (2010) is an adaptation of Frank Wedekind's 1891 Spring Awakening, but in relocating to Ireland this play about the tragic consequences of sexual innocence, Kilroy is able to comment on the revelations of ongoing sexual abuse in Irish institutions. Through these moves, Kilroy uses theater and playwriting as "ways of, inevitably, giving public exposure to privacies." Some of Kilroy's plays, such as The Shape of...
Read full abstract
Apr 3, 2018
Feng Deng 
Open Access