Playwright John Breen won kudos for his epic rugby play Alone It Stands - now he's bringing an Irish screen classic to the stage, offering his own unique take on the 1931 short story that inspired it. Ahead of its premiere at this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, John introduces The Quiet Man below...
Director Mikel Murfi and I first discussed adapting The Quiet Man for the stage back in 2008. The world was falling apart, but we were on a rowboat on Lough Arrow on the Sligo-Roscommon border talking about joy and how we could work together in the future to make more of it, on the stage in Ireland and beyond.
Micheal asked me what I though about The Quiet Man. He said every time the film came on the telly in Spain they had to generate more electricity during the ad breaks because everyone dashed to their kitchens to put on the kettle.
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Listen: Oliver Callan talks to the team behind The Quet Man
I hadn't seen it in years, so I watched the film and then read the original book of short stories and I was hooked. The writer, Maurice Walsh (who was one of Hemingway’s favorite story tellers) has a romantic mischievous writing style which mined the aftermath of the War of Independence and the Civil War and created a dozen troubled characters whose lives are intertwined in Green Rushes. In the foreword, the publisher insists the book is a novel of five constituent parts - however, each story stands on its own as a marvel of storytelling craft. Inspired by Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Walsh deftly keeps the narrative tension pulsing even as he jumps forward and backwards in time and place.
It's a cracking story full of joy and romance, money and land, ploughing and handball, sheep and cows, singing and dancing.
As a playwright, I wanted to try and get my arms around the whole world and try and celebrate as many strands of the novel as I could; in time it became clear that yes, less is more, and I pared the story back to its essentials.
Walsh was a man of his time and his female characters - though independent minded and brave - have limited agency. This is particularly true of Mary Kate Danagher, whose sense of honour and righteousness means she cannot bide the loss of a dowry owed to her by an intransigent boorish brother. She lacks the means to right this wrong herself and so must work through her new husband to bring about justice as she sees it.
As I wrote, I remembered a quote by playwright Dermot Bolger: 'Ireland does not have a class system it has a caste system'. I was interested in how a new class system emerged that mapped on to the old one. I was also struck by how a nation born in revolution in the GPO, with heroes like James Connolly and Maude Gonne, could have betrayed and brutalised its women less than a generation later.
What has emerged is a story, structured like a restoration comedy, which acknowledges the dark recent past of the world of the play but celebrates how deft and mercurial this community is, in how they joust and spar with words from a language imposed on them.
It's a cracking story, full of joy and romance, money and land, ploughing and handball, sheep and cows, singing and dancing.
I think it will be very funny. I was surprised by how funny Alone it Stands turned out to be when it got in front of an audience and as I write, after one week of rehearsal, one of the first things we see is the parish priest being hit in the face with a hurley.
The Quiet Man is at Civic Theatre, Tallaght, from 30th September - 12th October. with previews on 27th and 29th September, as part of this year's Dublin Theatre Festival - find out more here
