In English folk-tales, whenever a supernatural being appears, it’s an enemy. Dragons fighting St George, giants fighting Sir Gawain, giants living up beanstalks, giants being killed by Jack. (There are a lot of giants.) They all have to be defeated, in symbolic tales of English supremacy. Irish folklore takes a very different approach. The supernatural beings are part of the earth, spirits rising up to guide and protect the people: the giant Finn MacCool is there to defend Ireland; Niamh of Tír na nÓg gifts Oisin with everlasting youth; granted, those bloody leprechauns can be tricksy, but they aren’t invading, they’re just protecting their realm, guardians of Ireland’s natural beauty.
English stories link the listener with their liege-lord. Irish stories link you with the land.
And so it is with Cathleen ni Houlihan: feminine figure, mythical symbol and emblem of Irish nationalism. W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory got together to bring her to life in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1903, commemorating the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Her haunting presence and insistence that men must die for her is threaded through Irish history like the stitching on a léine.
Phoenicia of Dido’s interesting production creates an original framing device around the piece, made from letters and poems Yeats wrote about the play. We see Yeats writing to his co-author Lady Gregory, and agonising over whether, through their words, they may have encouraged more young men to lay down their lives. The play itself becomes almost tableau-esque, presented at one remove through Yeats’ memory – and indeed Tom Allen, as Yeats, also appears in his own play as Patrick, adding a frisson of artificiality like an on-stage narrator.
There’s also an ever-present, live-played violin, which, with mournful, scratched-out tunes, sets a tone of funereal reassurance. And the presence of the cast on stage from the the moment the audience walk in, frozen in place, makes them seem like a film on pause; a story cued up and waiting to be told.
As a concept, this is all not only well-thought-out, but also heartfelt, delicate and beautiful. I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
But all is not as perfect as the Lake Isle of Innisfree. While the ideas are original and strong, the execution does not quite match up. The actors are so wildly differing in style and approach that they almost feel like they are appearing in different shows. The father, Peter, is played by a man well beyond undergraduate age, with a convincingly genuine Irish accent. I have nothing against age-blind casting, but when this one figure is surrounded by twenty-year-olds, the effect is frankly jarring. It’s like Brendon Gleeson conned his way into a youth theatre company. His wife, Bridget, did not even attempt an Irish accent, and sounded like she was closer to Guildford than Galway. Again, no complaints about different voices, but the impact here acts as a sea-anchor on the atmosphere of the play. There was in fact an awkwardness between all the performers – a sense that they were simply taking turns to speak lines, rather than actually converse with each other as characters. And when Tom Allen changed back into his Yeats costume for the final speech, there was an extremely pregnant pause. Everybody just waited in silence while he presumably was frantically buttoning up his shirt outside the stage door.
One character who did feel fully realised was Cathleen ni Houlihan herself, who had a presence that was both mournful and proud, immortal yet vulnerable. Her simple statement, ‘A man stole my land’, felt laden with personal tragedy and broader, national significance.
At the end, Yeats recites his own poem ‘The Man and the Echo’, and wonders, with dawning guilt, about the self-sacrifices he may have inspired: ‘Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?’ Based on tonight, I don’t think there is much fear of that. But this production does have its heart in the right place, if not its timing and stagecraft. With a big dose of adrenaline, it could yet find its passionate intensity.