The Irish Rep is devoting a season to three of Sean O’Casey’s plays as part of its 30th Anniversary season. The Shadow of a Gunman was written in 1923 and is the first play of his “Dublin Trilogy.” The other two plays are Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). All three are being performed in repertory this spring.
Set during the Irish War of Independence, the scenes in The Shadow of a Gunman take place in a tenement room in a poor Dublin slum. Donal Davoren (James Russell) is a poet who has come to live with Seumus Shields (Michael Mellamphy). Other residents misstake Donal for an IRA gunman who is on the run. He doesn’t object to the notoriety it brings, especially when Minnie Powell (Meg Hennessy) takes an interest in him. The play begins with a heavy dose of comedy before turning tragic.
A business partner leaves a bag in Seumus’ room which he wrongly believes contains household items for resale. An ambush goes bad and the man who dropped the bag off is killed. The city is put on curfew. The Black and Tans are patrolling and raid the tenement. The play turns from a comedy into a tragedy. In this vivid retelling, the tension is riveting.
As is often the case at the Irish Rep, the cast is exemplary in creating fully fleshed out characters filled with life and the enjoyable foibles of human beings. Ciarán O’Reilly firmly directed this piece to be faithful to the play as written. The language is thick Irish brogue. There is a welcoming rhythm to the actors which somehow allows the abrupt change in tone to be convincing and harrowing. For those interested in exploring Mr. O’Casey’s work, The Shadow of a Gunman is a fine place to start. With a detailed and realistic set design by Charlie Corcoran, this is a fairly perfect production of this particular play.
The other two plays in the Dublin trilogy deal with the Easter Rising (1916) and the Irish Civil War (1922-23). Along with the Irish War of Independence which is depicted in The Shadow of a Gunman, the three major events mark the beginning of the nation of Ireland as we know it today.
What’s also noteworthy is that there is another superb play about the Irish on Broadway right now. Set during the Troubles in the 1980s, The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth is even grander in scope with a cast of two dozen full blooded characters. These stories are rich, filled with difficult politics and themes for an inexhaustibly resilient people. The Ferryman is the front runner for this year’s Best Play Tony. Now is exactly the right time to take in one of these masterpieces filled with colorful Irish men and women, all wrestling with the conflicts of the period in which they live.