Irish Theatre Research Articles

The Darkest Corner: documenting institutional abuse and its consequences at the Abbey Theatre

Documentary theatre, as a theatrical genre, has not maintained a continuous presence in Irish theatre. The Darkest Corner series, produced in 2010 by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland's National Theatre is, therefore, one of the first examples of Irish theatre using the genre to address political and social issues. Presenting three plays, Gerard Mannix Flynn's James X, Richard Johnson's The Evidence I Shall Give and Mary Raftery's No Escape, the series examines the widespread abuse of children in state institutions. Before analysing the documentary play commissioned by the Abbey, Raftery's No Escape, this article will begin with an exploration of documentary theatre in Ireland. It will then examine the material used for the play, the Ryan Report, published following the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, something of great political and social interest to contemporary Ireland and, finally, the play itself.

The lives of our mad mothers: Aging and contemporary performance

This paper investigates representations of aging in contemporary British and Irish theatre. The turn towards portraits of female, as opposed to male, aging in theatre, popular television comedy, and literature is notable. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to excavate the politics that lie beneath this cultural development. While, of course, older women have long populated the stage, it is the contention of this article that it is recent years that one can witness a concern to stage particular aspects of the lived experiences of older women's lives in contemporary British and Irish society. Through an examination of stereotype, comedy, illness roles, acting, intergenerational heritage, tragedy, and politics, this paper seeks to better understand the politics of staging age.

Theatre of Crisis: The Performance of Power in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1662–1692 (review)

Reviewed by: Theatre of Crisis: The Performance of Power in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1662–1692 Penelope Walrath Cole Theatre of Crisis: The Performance of Power in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1662–1692. By Patrick Tuite. Apple-Zimmerman Series in Early Modern Culture. Selingsgrove: Susquehana University Press, 2010. Cloth $65.00. 250 pages. Focusing on the interrelationship between cultural and political events in Ireland from 1662–1692, Patrick Tuite’s new book is a welcome addition to existing scholarship in theatre and performance in Ireland. Framed by the Restoration and the Williamite War, Tuite deftly negotiates the complicated and dynamic landscape of Irish political and cultural geography, providing in-depth historical context, new readings of play texts and performances, and a fresh look at the performative aspects of the various media available in the late seventeenth [End Page 225] century. While the work of Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre provides the foundation for Tuite’s explorations, he also identifies print media, state pageantry and military displays, civic building projects, and Church of Ireland rituals and sermons as cultural productions—performative media through which cultural codes of behavior and an understanding of social stratification were delivered. Tuite lays out his argument and methodology in a comprehensive introduction. Noting the political instability of Ireland in the seventeenth century, he asserts that cultural productions “served to establish an authoritative description of Ireland’s social structure” (19). Tuite focuses primarily on the efforts of the conforming Protestant minority of Ireland, who employed every available means to demonstrate, inculcate, and validate behavioral codes in order to establish and maintain their political and cultural superiority. To explain and amplify the ways in which the various media operated, Tuite indicates that he will examine the historical context surrounding cultural productions, as well as the messages generated, and the methods through which each medium distributed those messages to its audience. Chapter one delves more deeply into the historical circumstances leading up to the Restoration as well as the events that occurred between 1662 and 1692. Additionally, the production of plays, the writing and publishing of histories of Ireland, and the drawing of maps are all discussed as ways in which the struggle to control Ireland’s government is evident. In a very interesting discussion of a production of Othello in 1691, Tuite suggests that this play “provided the means to express the kingdom’s newly established power structure, a hierarchy that depended upon the identification of distinct ethnic, confessional, and political differences among the kingdom’s various subjects in order to remain stable” (30). In chapter two Tuite details the people responsible for the productions at Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre. While this information has certainly been covered in other accounts of Irish theatre, Tuite points out that “no history has examined how ideological concerns shaped the production and reception of these narratives during this period” (59). A discussion of the ideological differences of two of Dublin’s leaders and the effects of their conflicting beliefs on these productions is particularly enlightening. Chapter three, according to the introduction, “provides a close reading of the plays staged at Dublin’s theatre” and examines “[h]ow the performance of specific texts in an Irish context supported the Anglo-Protestant discourse found in other media” (22). Although there is a great deal of information regarding the physical aspects of the theatre and a helpful breakdown of the types of plays produced at the Smock Alley Theatre during this time, there is little to be found by way of a close reading of any one play. Instead, many different plays are referred to briefly in support of one idea or another. Many of these ideas are interesting, but it is difficult at times to make the connections Tuite seemingly takes for granted. [End Page 226] “The City as Stage,” chapter four, expands the discussion to include public spectacles, pageants, military displays, and religious ceremonies. In one of the most clearly written chapters, Tuite aptly describes the close ties many of the men behind these spectacles had to England and the influence those ties had on what, who, where, when, and for whom these large-scale spectacles were performed. Tuite concludes the book...

Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics (review)

Reviewed by: Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics Helen Heusner Lojek Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics, by Anthony Roche, pp. 235. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. $90. Although Brian Friel is best known in the United States for Translations (1980) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), the list of his dramatic works is large and varied, and represents significant intersections between theater and politics on both sides of the Irish border. Anthony Roche’s new study provides both an introduction to the author he rightly terms “Ireland’s leading contemporary playwright,” and a nuanced examination that will expand the understandings of readers and theatergoers already familiar with Friel. Roche draws on his own extensive experience as an interpreter of Irish drama (his indispensable Contemporary Irish Drama, the second edition of which appeared in 2009, for example), on his familiarity with multiple productions of the plays, on archival collections of Friel’s papers in the National Library of Ireland, on correspondence in the Guthrie Theatre Archive in Minnesota, and on first-hand experience with the politics of Irish theater, government, and society. The resulting analysis reveals the multiple factors and rethinkings that produced the now-familiar polished shapes of Friel’s plays. This multi-sourced approach is particularly effective in drawing out contemporary political resonances in such texts as Translations and Faith Healer. Roche’s understanding of the circumstances of performance, and his knowledge of the actors who embodied parts—which were sometimes written with them in mind—enhances his exploration of the ways that different productions have illuminated aspects of the plays. He is alive to Friel’s ability to incorporate new forms, revitalizing his drama with sometimes radical scripts and experiments. Chapter Five, “The Politics of Space,” makes a significant contribution to the emerging discussion of the use of space in Irish drama, and the book as a whole opens up all the plays—including those that audiences may have struggled to understand and appreciate. The approach is largely but not strictly chronological, allowing Roche to juxtapose plays that illuminate each other, and [End Page 150] to reveal the extent to which Friel over the years has sometimes changed not only his focus but also his mind, ranging from “ambivalence” to “outright contradiction” about such matters as success, his own early works, the need for artists to address political tensions, and directors. Both experts and relative novices will find these analyses helpful. Roche’s direct reliance on theory is subtle. He incorporates details of theory, plot, and history without talking down to his readers. For those unfamiliar with Friel’s 1958 radio play To This Hard House, for example, Roche makes clear and succinct links between that early work and both King Lear and Translations. Roche is alive to Friel’s linguistic allusions: Skinner, in The Freedom of the City, echoes King Lear; Friel’s notes for Wonderful Tennessee suggest that Taoiseach Charles Haughey’s personality “fed into” the creation of Terry Martin; there are details in Molly Sweeney that owe a debt to work by neurologist Oliver Sacks and to images of blindness in Oedipus Rex and King Lear. The dead children that are so notable a feature in drama by Friel (and for that matter, many other Irish playwrights) begin with the dead baby in another 1958 radio play, A Sort of Freedom. Roche demonstrates an admirable willingness to explore, but not impose, unusual explanations that some might regard as far-fetched. His discussion of Yolland’s disappearance in Translations takes on precisely this challenge, as Roche draws connections between the nineteenth-century Doalty twins and the twentieth century’s paramilitary groups and British army. The nuanced discussion of both text and politics reveals the richness of Friel’s work. Readers of this study are likely to hope that Roche—whose broad range and influences match those of the playwright he discusses—will in the future address issues that are not his concern here. Roche places Friel clearly in the traditions of both Irish and British drama, but spends little time on other English-language drama. Arthur Miller’s use of flashbacks and of sets combining various spaces, for example, merits discussion, as does Miller’s understanding of “Tragedy and...

Table of Contents, Masthead, and Editor's Note

SUBSCRIBE NOW at worldliteraturetoday.com DEPARTMENTS Crime & Mystery 09 Reading Through a Glass Darkly: The e-Book Revolution BY J. MADISON DAVIS Essays 12 A Lesson in the Nature of Revolution BY ADANIA SHIBLI 14 What Is Asia to Me? Looking East from Africa BY NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O 37 Fun with Your New Head: Getting into SF BY MICHAEL A. MORRISON Poetry 13 Meditation Caves of Tibet BY FRED DINGS 30 Two Poems BY PAULA BOHINCE 41 The Truth a Poet Can Tell BY MONIQUE ROUSSEL Fiction 31 We, the Daughters of Mr. Khunsur Ali BY MURTEDHA GZAR Contents In Every Issue | 03 Editor’s Note | 04 Editor's Pick | 05 Notebook | 53 World Literature in Review | 80 Outpost JULY/AUGUST 2012 FEATURES Post–Celtic Tiger Ireland 20 Major Drill In the mountains above the now inert streets of Dublin, tensions flare as two men perform army drills. Are they just “messing about,” or are they doomed to act out a deadly struggle? FICTION BY ETHEL ROHAN 25 Two Poems BY CAITRIONA O’REILLY 26 The Devil I Know Claire Kilroy’s characters ride through a “country dark” post–Celtic Tiger landscape, their GPS registering nothing and no St. Christopher to protect them. Is that the Devil out there in the gorse? FICTION BY CLAIRE KILROY A Tribute to Marina Carr 42 Theater in Eleven Dimensions: A Conversation with Marina Carr BY NANCY FINN 47 The Shadow Side of Modern Ireland The dark comedy, searching lyricism, and vernacular in Carr's plays might come from an Irish wellspring, but they travel well beyond it. BY JODY ALLEN RANDOLPH 51 Tough, Impossible Love: The Theater of Marina Carr Reconnecting with Irish theater at the 2012 Puterbaugh Festival. BY MARK CUDDY On the Cover Marina Carr takes time out for a portrait during her visit to the University of Oklahoma in March 2012. Photo by Shevaun Williams. How do you explain dark matter? That dark matter in us and out there. This search for the light, for beauty, for love, for eternity, for God if you believe in God, is one way of looking at the world, and you either enter into that journey or you reject that journey. — Marina Carr 26 42 12 14 EDITORIAL BOARD Roger Allen Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda Manuel Durán Howard Goldblatt George Gömöri Talat S. Halman Alamgir Hashmi Vasa D. Mihailovich Tanure Ojaide Ilán Stavans Theodore Ziolkowski CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Hester Baer José Juan Colín J. Madison Davis Pamela Genova Andrew Horton Emily Johnson Takeshi Kimoto Monica Seger Jonathan Stalling Rob Vollmar INTERNS Madeline Alford Emily Bibens Michael Bibens Kayley Gillespie Laura Hernandez Jessica Mitzner Eliza Robertson BOARD OF VISITORS Molly Shi Boren S. Ross Clarke Cheryl Foote Groenendyke Sarah C. Hogan Judy Zarrow Kishner Mary D. Nichols Susan Neustadt Schwartz George A. Singer Jeanne Hoffman Smith Lela Sullivan James R. Tolbert III Lew O. Ward Martha Griffin White Penny Williams WLT WORLD LITERATURE TODAY World Literature Today is published bimonthly at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. Postmaster: Send address changes to WLT, 630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110, Norman OK 73019-4037. Periodicals postage paid at Hanover PA 17331. Copyright © 2012 by World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma. ISSN 0196-3570 (1945-8134 online). Subscription and advertising rates are listed on our website (www. worldliteraturetoday.com) or can be obtained through the editorial office. Ph: 405.325.4531. Fax: 405.325.7495. 3,300 copies of this issue have been prepared and distributed by the Sheridan Press at no cost to the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma. The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution. July–August 2012 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & NEUSTADT PROFESSOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR & EDITOR IN CHIEF MANAGING EDITOR BOOK REVIEW EDITOR PROGRAMS & DEVELOPMENT ART DIRECTOR DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR CIRCULATION & ACCOUNTS DIGITAL MEDIA ASSISTANT WEB DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT Volume 86, Number 4 Robert Con Davis-Undiano Daniel Simon Michelle Johnson Marla Johnson Terri D. Stubblefield Merleyn Ruth Bell Jennifer Rickard Kay Blunck Kaitlin Hawkins Sam Tran “Fátima, Queen of the Night,” a short story by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, translated by George Henson Eric Bosse reports on the Ó Bhéal weekly...

Tough, Impossible Love: The Theater of Marina Carr

Artistic director of the Geva Theatre Center, Mark Cuddy was invited to participate in this year’s Puterbaugh Festival celebrating Marina Carr. Here he reflects on his experiences reconnecting with Irish theater through Carr’s work in an unlikely place: Norman, Oklahoma.

Review

Review

Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish Theatre

Cet ouvrage de Brian Singleton est une intervention bienvenue dans le monde de la critique theâtrale irlandaise. Singleton s’interesse depuis longtemps a des formes theâtrales peu traditionnelles et tres internationales, privilegiant la recherche, l’innovation et la performance, la pratique de la scene plus que le texte. Il explique en introduction la genese de l’ouvrage par la publication ces dernieres annees d’etudes inspirees par la theorie du genre qui ont permis aux voix feminines de se ...

Terminus (review)

Reviewed by: Terminus C. Austin Hil Terminus. By Mark O'Rowe. Directed by Mark O'Rowe. Abbey Theatre. Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. 9 March 2011. In 2011, the Irish government funded an initiative called "Imagine Ireland," bringing some 400 cultural events to forty US states. These events were meant to spark interest in Irish arts and culture, while shaping the ways in which Americans think about Ireland and Irish culture, broadly defined. Supported by this initiative, the Abbey Theatre's tour of playwright/ director Mark O'Rowe's Terminus represented a bold programming choice. The play is hard-hitting, containing vivid descriptions of back-room abortions, brutal murders, domestic violence, demons, angels, and graphic sex; it is dark, heavy, and frightening. At the Wexner Center, Terminus featured a highly stylized text, moving performances by committed actors, and an elegant design. While the Imagine Ireland project provided funding and visibility for the production, the brilliance of Terminus in the context of this worldwide outreach project was the way in which the play complicated the very ways in which audiences "imagine" contemporary Ireland. The play itself was written in a style that has become increasingly familiar lately, particularly in Irish theatre: the serial monologue. Terminus contained three stories, each told by a different narrator in rotation, in smaller, interrelated narrative pieces. These narrators, named A, B, and C, addressed the audience directly and recounted events from the course of a single epic day. A, played by Olwen Fouéré, was a woman on a mission to save the life of the unborn child of one of her former students. B, played by Catherine Walker, was a young woman experiencing demons and angels during the last moments of her own life following a fall from a construction-site crane. C, played by Declan Conlon, was a painfully shy serial killer who sold his soul to the devil for the ability to sing, and thus, he hopes, to find true love. While the Irish serial monologue was familiar in style, hearkening back to Brian Friel's Faith Healer, Conor McPherson's This Lime Tree Bower and Port Authority, Elaine Murphy's Little Gem, and Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs, the comparisons between these and O'Rowe's piece end there. Yes, Terminus is Irish—profoundly so. It is set in Dublin at the end of the Celtic Tiger era, as evidenced by the host of cranes peppering the skyline in the text's narrative. The characters are all Irish, and the playwright certainly comments on contemporary Irish political issues like abortion. The writing itself, however, makes Terminus unique. While all of the other plays mentioned above are rather poetic, O'Rowe's play is not only written in verse—a free and rollicking verse—but also in rhyme. The rhyme scheme is irregular, sometimes offering a discernable pattern, but most often planting a rhyme in ways meant to surprise. This heightened language at various times calls attention to the words spoken by the characters (putting the words themselves directly in front of the audience), and at other times is jarring enough to provide a bit of comic relief (a forced rhyme calling attention to itself). While this rhyme and verse felt unusual and a bit unnerving, they were terribly engaging to hear in a contemporary play. In lines like "This Samaritan shit's the pits, I think," it was also very clear that the inhabitants of Terminus were not bound by the linguistic contours of the naturalized [End Page 459] world, but rather existed in a world of imagination. An additional upshot of this intense rhyme scheme devoid of any pattern was the continuation of the thematic perpetuation of momentum. Throughout much of the play, the rhyme dictated tempo, driving the language and the story forward toward unavoidable destruction. Click for larger view View full resolution Olwen Fouéré ("A"), Declan Conlon ("C"), and Catherine Walker ("B") in Terminus. (Photo: Chris Sweda, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.) Visually, Terminus was set in a sort of limbo. Thanks to the brilliant scenic design by Jon Bausor (who also designed the costumes), lighting by Philip Gladwell, and sound by Philip Stewart, the production...

Staging the "New Irish": Interculturalism and the Future of the Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Theatre

In this article, I argue that the work of minority-ethnic artists reframes the parameters of Irish national belonging and tests the limits of "interculturalism" as official discourse in the post-Celtic Tiger nation. I engage with the search for new critical paradigms to illuminate how emergent discourses of Irish interculturalism assist in understanding and locating the work of minority-ethnic theatre artists in a critical discourse that has had difficulty accommodating their presence. To this end, I examine two recent new productions of J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World (by Pan Pan Theatre and by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle at the Abbey Theatre) that directly engage the Irish theatre canon as a site of entry into Irish national belonging for minority-ethnic communities. I then juxtapose these Playboys with new works by Romanian and Irish-Indian playwrights Gianina Cărbunariu and Ursula Rani Sarma that stretch the limits of what can be understood as "Irish" drama. The contingent and overlapping networks of these artists' influences, journeys, and obstacles map the multiple possibilities of Irish theatrical interculturalisms that are already in motion as well as gesturing towards the challenges faced by the post-Celtic Tiger Irish theatre to come.

Staging the “New Irish”: Interculturalism and the Future of the Post–Celtic Tiger Irish Theatre

In this article, I argue that the work of minority-ethnic artists reframes the parameters of Irish national belonging and tests the limits of “interculturalism” as official discourse in the post–Celtic Tiger nation. I engage with the search for new critical paradigms to illuminate how emergent discourses of Irish interculturalism assist in understanding and locating the work of minority-ethnic theatre artists in a critical discourse that has had difficulty accommodating their presence. To this end, I examine two recent new productions of J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World (by Pan Pan Theatre and by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle at the Abbey Theatre) that directly engage the Irish theatre canon as a site of entry into Irish national belonging for minority-ethnic communities. I then juxtapose these Playboys with new works by Romanian and Irish-Indian playwrights Gianina Cărbunariu and Ursula Rani Sarma that stretch the limits of what can be understood as “Irish” drama. The contingent and overlapping networks of these artists’ influences, journeys, and obstacles map the multiple possibilities of Irish theatrical interculturalisms that are already in motion as well as gesturing towards the challenges faced by the post–Celtic Tiger Irish theatre to come.

Personal and Political: Irish Theater in 2010

Fintan O’Toole, the earnest and bespectacled drama critic and public intellectual, recently posed a compelling question: “Can Irish dramatists tackle the big questions again?” Writing in the Irish Times, he asserted that the unifying factor in Irish theater of the early twentieth century “was its close connection to the public world.” The plays of writers like Sean O’Casey, Brian Friel, and John B. Keane “always had a desire to connect to the large questions of morality and identity, of history and economics.” But, with a few notable exceptions, O’Toole argues, no one is writing “big, ambitious social plays” anymore. During the Celtic Tiger, Irish culture “failed in the most basic way. It was unable to create for Irish people even a vaguely accurate narrative or image of who and where they were.”1 A bold proposition. But is it an accurate one? 2010 is as good a year as any to test O’Toole’s thesis. Last year, theater in Ireland managed somehow to dig its way out of the doom and gloom; judged solely by the number of productions and the relatively strong ticket takes, Irish drama thrived. Theater companies worked as furiously as ever, if not more so. Formal mentoring programs for new playwrights, including one at the Abbey, survived funding cuts. Writers and performers took advantage of an increasing number of stages, festivals, and town halls to produce their shows. And between the bank bailout, the exposure of corruption, and a mass economic hysteria, it’s not as if there wasn’t anything for the playwrights to write about. Irish companies certainly didn’t give up producing those big, ambitious dramas of the past. The Druid Theatre Company’s production of The Silver Tassie, O’Casey’s play about two young footballers transported from Ireland to the battlefields of World War I, was not just ambitious: it was epic. Everything about the production, which toured nationally and internationally, was big: its cast of nineteen (the largest in Druid history), the colossal tank looming over

Masculinities and the contemporary Irish theatre

Masculinities and the contemporary Irish theatre

Publications Dossier: Changing the Landscape of Irish Theatre Studies

This dossier aims to report on recent developments and interventions that are changing the landscape of Irish theatre-studies scholarship, revealing the ways in which discourses of nationalism, sexuality, gender, class and the family are being renegotiated. Critical analysis of Irish theatre has, up until recently, focused upon the dramatic text in a legacy of work that has traditionally been valued for its ‘literary’ merit. Now, we can see how an interrogation of the process of canonicity and a focus on the conditions and potential of performance are being addressed by a new generation of scholarship. Such research serves to critique the narratives leading up to, and beyond, Irish independence, repositioning the relationship between the founders of the Irish Literary Revival at the turn of the twentieth century and cultural nationalism, as well as resituating the dramaturgical praxis of a central figure such as John Millington Synge. Contributors to this dossier also draw attention to the ways in which recent publications on Irish theatre take social transformations into account, and give a sense of the ever-shifting trajectories of theatre, performance and culture on the island.

Inseparable and No Longer Subsequent: The Relocation and Representation of Women in Irish Theatre Practices

Women as playwrights, directors, designers and actors have played an indisputably integral part in cultivating the theatrical landscapes of Ireland, but their work, however, has largely been overlooked. That said, this is not a new lament: the last twenty years of Irish theatre scholarship have sought to redress this gender imbalance by looking to women's involvement in the ‘imagining’ of the Irish nation. Colm Tóibín's Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (Lilliput Press, 2002) famously confirmed Augusta Gregory's co-authorship (with W. B. Yeats) of Kathleen ni Houlihan (1902). C. L. Innes's widely known Women and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880–1935 (The University of Georgia Press, 1993), shed light on the ideologies behind the iconography of Mother Ireland, and Mary Trotter's Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2001) revealed the impact of Maud Gonne and the all-women society the Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin) on the development of the Irish National Theatre Society.

Performance and Queer Praxes: Recent Paradigmatic Shifts

Performance studies and queer studies are two of the most significant paradigmatic shifts to energize the analysis of Irish theatre and performance in very recent times. The development of these critical approaches can be seen to respond to the growth of more experimental, performance-centred methods of making and interpreting practice, and the emergence of a wide range of identities within theatre and performance sites, and the Irish social and cultural landscape more generally.

Rethinking Masculinity

Authentic Irish manhood has long been the concern of several self-appointed vanguards. However, just exactly what may constitute authentic Irish manhood has not, until quite recently, been the subject of serious critical and theoretical reflection. Moreover, Irish playwriting (and theatre production) has a notoriously male-dominated history. Because of this masculinist and often misogynistic slant to Irish theatre writing, there is a sense, for the masculinities scholar at least, that any piece of erudite theatre scholarship can make critical inroads into the deconstruction of Irish masculinity in performance.

Paige Reynolds, Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish SpectacleModernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle. PaigeReynolds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. ix+257.

<i>Paige Reynolds,</i> Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle<i>Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle</i>. PaigeReynolds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. ix+257.

Translation strategies in Katherine Philips's Pompey

When Katherine Philips produced her translation of Pompey, she was unaware that she set in motion a trend for classical translations in Irish theatre. As J.-P. Short stresses, her translation was ‘the first real translation of the Restoration and it was put on for the first time in 1663 in the newly-opened Smock-Alley Theatre in Dublin’. This article will examine Katherine Philips's translation strategies in her play Pompey and it will examine her choice of subject for the Restoration stage. Pompey (1663) was translated by Katherine Philips in the early years of the Restoration. Véronique Desnain observes that Philips was aware of the need to offer a play which commented on the aftermath of the war and the need to achieve political stability and the wish to establish a cultured Protestant Anglo-Irish identity. Philips used translation in a competent manner to mediate the transitional events of the newly restored monarchy. Translation, as Kay Gilliland Stevenson has pointed out, performs an important function in drama in this turbulent period. ‘Translation is a phenomenon particularly interesting when considering self-consciousness about periods, or transitions.’

SCOTT BOLTWOOD (ed.), Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in 20th-Century Irish Drama * MELISSA SIHRA and PAUL MURPHY (eds), The Dreaming Body: Contemporary Irish Theatre

SCOTT BOLTWOOD (ed.), Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in 20th-Century Irish Drama * MELISSA SIHRA and PAUL MURPHY (eds), The Dreaming Body: Contemporary Irish Theatre