Druid's cycle of plays by Lady Gregory is set in an early-century version of Galway, where communities are splintered by divisions and persuasive songs are in the air. Photo: Matthew Thompson
★ ★ ★
“That’s no song to be singing in these times,” says a police sergeant with grim caution, early in Druid’s cycle of plays by Lady Gregory. The tune describes the pirate queen Granuaile as shackled by English oppressors and wailing into the wind. To a patriot, the song could be dangerous enough to ignite a soul-changing conversion.
There are a few persuasive melodies in these plays, set in an early-century version of Galway where communities are splintered by divisions. When Garrett Lombard’s stone faced sergeant opens up to a mysterious ballad singer (Marty Rea) about rebel songs he sang in his youth, they sit back-to-back on a quay, resembling two sides of one conflict. A sympathetic Royal Irish Constabulary officer making ends meet on one hand, and a rebel risking his life to revolt against the crown on the other.
Gregory’s script seems to pave the way to these tensions with comic flourishes, with eye-winking disguises and played up physical obstacles. Surprisingly, against the sweepingly picturesque surroundings of Coole Park, the solemnity of director Garry Hynes’s production seems to suffocate such comedy, much like the heavy details of Francis O’Connor’s costuming, occasionally muffling the ballad singer’s voice.
Elsewhere, such graveness finds its mark. When we follow the mother (Marie Mullen) and wife (Sarah Morris) of an imprisoned man to a jail, we hear their fears of him being a police informer via chunks of exposition that are difficult to camouflage. But as Mullen’s face scrunches into an admirable picture of determination, her woman undertaking a mission to clear her son’s name by keening throughout the county, the play finds a disarming release.
People can be immortalised in folklore, and to stage these plays is to treat their music as serious plot devices, as turnarounds of fortunes. After the death of a poor woman in McDonough’s Wife, two tormenting hags (Venetia Bowe and Megan Cusack) insist she will never be mourned. Yet, her husband’s pipe music summons townspeople to help bury her. In Gregory’s tragedy, there is faith that when people hear the good word they will believe it.
That may seem an easy deus ex machina, but Gregory turns her own truism inside out in the razor-sharp comedy Hyacinth Halvey. As an agriculture official (Donal Gallery) arrives into town, with flawless character references under his arm, he discovers a joyless place with no card-playing or dancing. He teams up with a layabout (Liam Heslin) to destroy his good name and get fired.
There is nothing particularly new in this comic pairing of an uptight white-collar worker and an easy-going labourer, but the Molière-like rhythms of classic comedy still satisfy, as Gallery and Heslin excellently surf the miraculous plot reversals and impeccably suspended resolutions.
This gleeful farce is a standout when compared with muted comedy devices elsewhere, and the overwhelming acridness of McDonough’s Wife, all which suggests DruidGregory is uncertain how to balance its different tones. To ease transitions, Lady Gregory herself appears, in Marie Mullen’s striking resemblance, but as nothing more than an usher leading us between plays. It gives the effect of a historical figure made flesh more so than a character of intrigue, of pageantry more so than art.
There is a compelling idea in concluding with Cathleen Ní Houlihan, co-written by W.B. Yeats, and tracing the community divisions seen throughout the plays back to the United Irishmen Rebellion. Here, Mullen has the difficult task of playing a symbol, an old woman enchanting a young man while the countryside takes up arms. If darker inflections have a surprisingly low-impact, leaving the revival feeling tatty, it may be because DruidGregory doesn’t always turn up the volume on the required music.
Run ended. On tour until 17th October.
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