Analysis: The theatre was a space for the Clare woman to explore her literary muses and navigate the convoluted structures of Irish society
By Barry Houlihan, University of Galway
Edna O'Brien’s writing in the novel form, short story, and prose sought out those stories and experiences that so often go unspoken, silently acknowledged, but rarely explored. O’Brien’s writing for the theatre is also an important if also underappreciated body of work. O’Brien authored a number of works for the stage including A Pagan Place (1972) (an adaptation of her own novel of the same name), The Gathering, (1974), Virginia (1980) and the more recent Joyce’s Women, which explored the lives of the women who surrounded and influenced James Joyce.
The plays of Edna O’Brien form an important body of writing where she navigated the complex and convoluted structures of Irish society of the mid-twentieth century, as well as a space in which she presented the literary influences that shaped her thinking.
The Gathering premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in October 1974 and was O’Brien’s first play produced by the national theatre. Set in a farmhouse in the West of Ireland, a family gather together to celebrate the parent’s fortieth wedding anniversary. But as with most Irish family gatherings things do not always sail smoothly. O’Brien’s play critiques the increasing materialism of the 1970s and with the clashes of a family navigating its past and its future, with multiple generations under one roof.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, in a July 1976 episode of 'Last House' Edna O'Brien talks to Tom McGurk about writing, how to tell a story and her novel 'Mother Ireland'
O’Brien received personal attacks and condemnation as well as roundly negative reviews during the run of the play. She remembered how on the play’s opening in 1974 "the theatre seemed to be packed with old enemies and rivals and the air to be thick with condemnation of one sort or another . . . the bad notices that followed confirmed the ill will".
Set in a fictional village in rural Co. Clare, A Pagan Place was an adaptation of O’Brien’s own novel. It explored a family ruled by patriarchal laws and dominated by atmospheric presence of land and place. The central character, Creena, is a girl of twelve, who along with her older sister Emma live in a world fuelled by threats of violence, sexual abuse, stigma, and control, in a then present day Ireland, that ferociously unforgiving system that underpinned home, Church and State.
The play received its world première at the Royal Court Theatre, London in November 1972, directed by Ronald Eyre, designed and lit by Sean Kenny. Kenny won recognition for his provocative stage design work in London, where he had also been Artistic Director of the Mermaid Theatre. Playwright Wilson John Haire wrote in a letter to critic and scholar D.E.S. Maxwell after seeing the play that its theme was "an excellent one – rural life in county Clare in the 1940s . . . the brutality of life in a narrow community did peep through at moments. The London audience did get the impression that this was southern Ireland today".
Haire's point is revealing about the play’s reception by English audiences, as distinct from Irish audiences, hesitant to acknowledge the cruel patriarchy and land obsession at its core. Discussing the play with Jack Foster in Fortnight magazine, O'Brien said: "Every man women and child in a place like Ireland feels guilt, like a bed of roses it blooms". The play was savaged by some Irish critics, including James Downey who wrote: "There can be few parallels for the artistic atrocity being perpetrated by Miss O’Brien . . . the most atrocious thing on view at present at the Royal Court". Such comments raise raise the question, was it the play or the person of O’Brien under review?
The Irish premiere of A Pagan Place took place at the Abbey Theatre in November 1977, directed by Patrick Mason, his first work directed on the main Abbey stage. For this play to reach the Abbey stage at all was a subversive act. O’Brien broke established gendered absences of plays by women from the main stage of the Abbey and of Irish theatre in general, once stating that "In terms of overall perception, I think in high echelons women are still regarded as being a bit lower down the table".
The Abbey production was designed by Wendy Shea. The original play poster the Abbey production of A Pagan Place features an image of a despondent female face at centre foreground, eyes looking away from the viewer. From her head, her hair radiates upwards, the strands of hair taking the form of land and sea crashing into each other. Shea’s poster is matched by its imagery of rural Ireland at a conflict with modernity as within the play’s programme a series of black and images by photographer Fergus Bourke are included. Bourke’s images show a rural, agricultural way of life, at odds with the modernity of its time.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Arena, in two interviews Edna O'Brien marks her 90th birthday and the 2022 production of her play Joyce's Women
Virginia, a play about the inner life and relationships of Virginia Woolf, followed in 1980, premiering at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario, and starring Maggie Smith. While embodying Woolf's essence, mind, loves, and private world, O’Brien received warm plaudits for her sensitive depiction. Mel Gussow in The New York Times described it a compelling portrait of genius and of madness.
Later plays by O’Brien include Our Father (1999), directed by Lynne Parker at the Almeida Theatre, London; Triptych (2003) which opened at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco, and Haunted (2009) at the Royal Exchange Theatre, London. Two productions of O’Brien’s banned 1960 novel, The Country Girls, were producedl, the first by Red Kettle Theatre Company and Garter Lane Theatre Waterford, directed by Mikel Murfi in 2011, with a later production by the Abbey Theatre in 2019 directed by Graham McLaren.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ News, the world premiere of Edna O'Brien's play Joyce's Women
The theatre continued to be a space for O’Brien to explore her literary muses. In September 2022, and in marking the centenary of James Joyce’s Ulysses, O’Brien’s last performed new play, Joyce’s Women set the lives of Nora Barnacle, Lucia Joyce, Harriet Shaw Weaver and other women influential in Joyce’s life and books centre stage. Directed by Conall Morrison, it terrific cast included Genevieve Hulme Beaman, Hilda Fay and Ali White. The production moved the action from Galway to Dublin to Zurich, weaving in video projection and dance, in a captivating production of the women so often behind, literally and figuratively, the literary and personal experience of Joyce.
Speaking of Joyce, O'Brien said he was "my ultimate hero for 60 years, but to paint the canvas of his life was daunting. Therefore I decided to depict him as seen by the key figures in his life- Mother, Wife, Mistress of a fleeting moment, his patron Harriet Weaver and his beloved Daughter Lucia, of whom he said her mind was but a transparent leaf away from his".
I was fortunate to have attended the opening night at the Abbey Theatre. Just prior to the curtain, O’Brien entered a still packed foyer to hushed awe of the audience. All had gathered in waiting to see her arrive, aware of being in the presence of such rare greatness. It was a fitting occasion, a homecoming for O’Brien and for her writing, at the national theatre.
Barry Houlihan is an Archivist at the James Hardiman Library at the University of Galway.
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
