The Plough and the Stars

by Sean O'Casey

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 August 2016

Jeremy Herrin and Howard Davies have co-directed this revival of Sean O'Casey's play set in 1915 and 1916, marking the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. The set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, shows us a crumbling tenement in Dublin - first the Clitheroe's flat, then a nearby pub, then the outside of the tenement, and finally the attic flat. A clever use of the revolve reveals the general seediness of the area, and, later, the dangers arising from the street fighting of the uprising.

At first, in November 1915, the situation seems set almost for social comedy, with Mrs Gogan (Josie Walker), a doom-laden charwoman, taking delivery of her neighbour's hat (which she immediately lampoons), the neighbour Nora Clitheroe (Judith Roddy) trying to keep house with an uncle (Lloyd Hutchinson) determined to dress up in military finery, and Bessie Burgess (Justine Mitchell), another neighbour, calling down imprecations on all Irish people who are not loyal to the Crown (her son is serving in Flanders).

There are, however, darker undercurrents. There is unrest, and the military trappings are related to the Irish Citizen Army. When Nora's husband Jack (Fionn Walton) returns home there is tension between husband and wife, which flares into open violence on his part and desperation on hers when Jack realises that Nora has burnt a letter addressed to him summoning him to an army meeting.

We hear some speeches from the meeting in the second act, as various speakers orate outside a local pub. Inside, tempers rise as more and more grog is consumed, but the arguments are sometimes almost good-natured, and not always political - there is clearly a long history of high-spirited discussion and dispute among people who have known each other for years. The young socialist (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor)baits anyone who will listen, but is clearly a physical coward.

The third and fourth acts take place during the Easter Rising. With gunfire and explosions in the city, the characters we have come to know react drunkenly and brazenly, some looting shops and others helping comrades who are wounded. There is an extraordinary mixture of knavery and heroism, which can hardly have pleased Dubliners ten years after the event seeking to sentimentalise and venerate the Rising. The starkest crisis still centres around Jack and Nora Clitheroe as she desperately tries to keep him from danger while he spurns her for making him look cowardly.

Finally we see men holed up in Bessie Burgess's attic flat hoping to avoid notice from the British soldiers and completely unable to deal with Nora's encroaching madness. Only the much maligned Bessie tries to calm her and shield her properly from the knowledge that Jack has been killed - Bessie being the one person in the building who has consistently despised all the potential rebels around her. Yet it is she who is mortally wounded by British sharp shooters, suffering one of the most gruellingly slow deaths I have seen staged for some time.

All the fine words and heady optimism seem vitiated by drunkenness and sordid greed. The older men are buffoons, while the younger men are consumed by ideology or misplaced courage. The women suffer poverty, neglect, and paralysing fear for their menfolk. It is extraordinary that there are some hilarious scenes in the play, before the grimmer realities assert themselves, and O'Casey is masterful at shifting the tone without condescension or cynicism.  The resulting slide from bloodthirsty oratory to tragedy is thus all too credible.

The cast is excellent, though the wordiness of the play delivered in broad Dublin accents can prove difficult at times. But the sheer loquaciousness of the Irish, though something of a stereotype, is nevertheless part of the point, as the words are almost as intoxicating as the liquor, and perhaps (in this view) far more dangerous.