Ploughinga new furrow for O’Casey
Fresh look at Rising classic reaps rewards for actors
When Seán Holmes directed Drum Belly
in The Abbey in 2013, 47 tonnes of cement were pumped onto the stage and two levels of support were put under the stage to take the weight. The polished concrete slab was removed after the run of the play. Only a director who knows exactly what he wants would do something like that. Holmes returns to The Abbey next week directing The Plough And The Stars, Seán O’Casey’s jaundiced look at the contrast between the high-blown rhetoric of the 1916 Rising and the reality for people in the Dublin slums.
Janet Moran, who plays the tragi-comic Mrs Gogan, says the cast are thrilled to be working with a director of such calibre.
‘He’s a very exciting director,’ she says, ‘a fountain of ideas and very rigorous, so it’s a dizzy, hard-working rehearsal room. I know the play well, yet it’s constantly surprising. He sees the play unencumbered by any of the baggage an Irish director might have with it, and he’s great with actors.’
And he’s open to suggestions from the cast? ‘Absolutely. Even if you have a terrible idea, he lets you play it out until you realise yourself that it’s a terrible idea! We’re being made to look at everything in a fresh way. From the first moment, I think the audience will be sitting up and I think they’re going to be surprised throughout.’
In 2012 Janet played Maisie Madigan in
Juno And The Paycock, an essentially comic role. Mrs Gogan is different, a character with a morbid obsession with death.
‘Her obsession is comical, but it’s an interesting quirk. We spend a lot of our life trying to avoid thinking about death, but it’s almost titillating for her. I’ve been trying to find a way so her obsession is not just light relief for us to ridicule her. She’s a character surrounded by death; her husband has died, her child is dying, and in some way it’s a deflection of what’s actually happening around her.’
Mrs Gogan’s speeches are often convoluted and not in everyday language. How does an actor get their head around that problem? ‘Technically it’s quite difficult. You’re looking at 10 lines and it’s just one sentence and you have to keep the audience engaged. On the other hand, it’s a real joy and freedom because each of those sentences is so full of vivid images.’
They’re playing the argument between Mrs Gogan and Bessie Burgess over possession of the pram used for looting as though there was a legal element to it. ‘It’s fun to play it precisely, like giving evidence in a court of law.’
There’s great comedy amid the tragedy, but O’Casey’s love scenes leave me cold, such as Jack Clitheroe singing When
You And I Were Young to Nora. Not in this production, she assures me. ‘I think you’re going to be delighted with it. What’s happening in that scene is so full of joy and genuinely funny, that you laugh along with it. It’s a lovely surprising moment.’
One of the play’s most memorable scenes is when the Protestant, rebel-hating Bessie Burgess comforts Nora (Kate Stanley Brennan), whose baby has died and whose rebel husband has been killed. Bessie is played by Eileen Walsh and she sings the hymn Lead Kindly Light to the distraught Nora. ‘Kate and Eileen, who has such a lovely voice, play that scene beautifully. Then I have to come in and make sure I don’t mess it up!’ Janet’s range of stage and TV roles include current comedy
Bridget And Eamon, short play Swing and Eugene
O’Neill’s Desire Under The Elms. She also played Anne Byrne
in Love/ Hate, but wasn’t beaten up. ‘No, but my husband was killed,’ she laughs. That’s almost a happy ending for
Love/Hate.
‘Fromthe first moment
I think the audience will besittingup andtheyare goingtobe surprised throughout’