Marking 100 years since it premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Seán O'Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars has returned to the stage of the national theatre of Ireland.
Set in tenement Dublin during the period of the 1916 Easter Rising, there were reports of riots in the audience in the first week of the play’s original run in 1926.
Audience members were angered by O’Casey’s depiction of the damaging impact that the politics and poverty of 1916 had on his working class characters, and the disruption famously led to W.B. Yeats appealing to the unruly audience saying, "You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?".
One hundred years later, The Plough and the Stars is "a brilliant story, and the idea originally was about looking at who are we, and who are we going to become? What does it mean to be Irish?" said Caitríona McLaughlin, Artistic Director Abbey Theatre.
She believes the play was controversial because "it challenged our idea of ourselves".
"I think people thought at the time that they were much more noble and conservative" so the idea of Seán O’Casey’s flawed, troubled working class Dubliners, being "sexual, that they were thieves, that they would be opportunistic, people at the time didn’t like that idea of themselves," Ms McLaughlin added.
Watch: The Abbey celebrates 100 years since The Plough and the Stars premiere
Described as a tragedy in four acts, the play explores the devastation experienced by a young woman, Nora Clitheroe, as her beloved Jack, and her neighbours in their poverty stricken Dublin tenement, struggle in the turbulent political landscape of the time.
Now a century later, the play is regarded as an Irish theatre masterpiece, and tonight the Abbey will mark the play’s centenary by welcoming back actors who have played beloved characters including Bessie Burgess, Rosie Redmond and the married couple Jack and Nora Clitheroe on its stage over the past decades.
Veteran Abbey Theatre actor Clive Geraghty has accepted the invitation to return tonight and explained how he had played Jack Clitheroe in six productions over the years including the celebrated 1976 Abbey theatre production. The actor has his own deeply personal connection with The Plough and the Stars.
"It was the first play I ever saw back in 1955," he said, explaining that "my mother got two complimentary seats for the Abbey and I was blown out of it, it was the first time my mother had been to the theatre too, and if anybody had told me that night that within 10 years, I’d be up on the Abbey stage playing Jack, I would not have believed them."
For Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty, who is currently playing Jack Clitheroe in this 2026 production, meeting Clive Geraghty in advance of the centenary celebrations, was a lovely experience.
As the two Jacks traded notes, Mr Doherty said "there’s a fizz in the air, which is really special and everybody knows that we’re putting on something that has a lot of history behind it".
'Plough' as it is affectionately called by the cast and crews, is a popular show for Irish theatres, and is the third play of O'Casey's well-known Dublin Trilogy - the other two being The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924).
"His plays are in every Irish actor’s theatrical DNA," according to acclaimed actress Cathy Belton, who is delighted to be returning to the Abbey Theatre celebrations tonight as part of the Centenary Company.
"I have been lucky enough to have played three parts in The Plough and the Stars in 2000, 2002 and 2016," she said, explaining how the "three times were all very different, but equally as terrifying, nourishing and inspiring, and that’s O’Casey".
She looks back on the 2002 production which toured to the Barbican in London where she played Nora Clitheroe with real affection, describing how "it’s a real privilege as an actor to get to play in The Plough and the Stars’ and 100 years on sadly, it’s as relevant today as it was 100 years ago".
Ms Belton believes that O'Casey had a unique understanding of the women in his plays, saying that they are "multi faceted, complex, surprising, inspirational women but they are heroes and are the hidden heroes of every piece".
She added that "for an actress to play one of these leads, be it Bessie Burgess or Mrs Gogan or Nora, they are a joy. Here’s Nora Clitheroe trying to make a home, to make it full of love, and The Plough and the Stars all starts with her door being fixed, but then the war bursts in. She can’t prevent it, and O’Casey puts the women out there as the real peace makers and the real revolutionaries," Cathy Belton explained.
"I think it’s a gift for any actress to play one of these women," she said.
Tom Creed is the director of this centenary production and in his view "this play is our inheritance as Irish theatre artists, and it is our greatest treasure".
He explained the power of the location of the Abbey for this production, describing how "you can see the GPO from the window of the rehearsal room, and when the actors go into their dressing rooms, they pass by paintings of some of the original cast members of the play, it’s very powerful".
As part of the centenary celebrations, the bar area at the theatre, is hosting a vivid exhibition of photographs, news articles and reviews on productions from the past century.
Over 300 actors have performed in the play at the Abbey since that 1926 production, with photos depicting past cast members including Brendan Gleeson, Cyril Cusack, Siobhan McKenna and Sorcha Cusack filling the walls.
Explaining the enduring appeal of the 100 year old show, Tom Creed said that "this is a play about war" and while it is "something from history, it’s a really profound, living, breathing, work of art about so many things that are so important to us all right now".
The production runs for another five weeks, and Mr Creed said that one of the "amazing things about coming back to an old play, is finding new things in it, and also of reminding ourselves what we love about it".
