REBEL RUFFLES AFEW FEATHERS
Actors are stars of a Plough recast with modern twists, rock music and more laughs
People who are easily annoyed may find great scope for their feelings in this production. That will probably please Sean Holmes, artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith, brought in to give an outsider’s view of Seán O’Casey’s acerbic look at the 1916 Rising. Holmes has said a lot of theatre is boring, that he wants to change attitudes, and if pop music does the job of dialogue, use it.
What he’s come up with is a production with high-octane levels of comedy and some quirky directing that will annoy as many as it will please. But it’s not boring.
Nor is it for anyone who wants a flag-waving endorsement of 1916, but considering the ructions that faced the first production in 1926, Holmes can claim some licence to upset the regulars. Being offensive is written into the play’s history.
The only real heroes are the two slum-dwellers, Bessie Burgess, the belligerent Union Jack-waving Protestant whose son is fighting in France, and the boozy Fluther.
The production begins with a surprising tongue-in-cheek touch that’s confusing and moving all in one. Among the good bits is the portrayal of Jack Clitheroe (Ian Lloyd Anderson) as a sulky, selfabsorbed, potential wife-beating Citizen Army officer who finds out the hard way what war is all about.
His love scene with Nora (Kate Stanley Brennan) is more robust than the usual version, but having him belt out the love song When
You And I Were Young with a microphone was one of a number of era-mixing devices that drew attention to themselves without being illuminating. There’s the modern pram used by Mrs Gogan and Bessie that isn’t practical for looting, and Covey seemed to have looted a fridge.
Mrs Gogan stands yards from poor Mollser when she’s supposed to be comforting her, and addresses herself to the audience as much as to Mollser. Indeed, the technique of addressing the audience is a regular feature. Even the prostitute Rosie, who should be concentrating on business with the Covey, does it.
And Rosie’s general soliciting demeanour is about as subtle as the artillery flying in from the gunship on the Liffey. The Covey (Ciarán O’Brien), is still a loudmouth know-all, but also a more agreeable comic character.
The first half is almost non-stop comedy. The pub row between Fluther and the Covey is an orchestrated piece of musichall slapstick, but some of the later comedy gets the tone wrong, especially Fluther’ s scene with the dying Molls er, and when he returns
drunk after the looting, to the sound of explosives and exploding beer cans. You could call it ironic contrast, but comic overload would be nearer the mark.
I can take most of the modern aspects and even, at a stretch, the use of rock music for dramatic effect. But what’s the point of the political meeting being treated as a TV transmission, switched on and off with a remote control? Maybe I missed some symbolism there.
Then there’s the slow lowering of the metal framework stage set to give different levels in the tenement. It looks ungainly and cramps the final scene. The performances are generally excellent, particularly David Ganly as Fluther, Janet Moran as the comically death-obsessed Mrs Gogan, and Eileen Walsh as Bessie.
The acting and directorial high jinks are memorable and it captures the tragic ending, but it may ruffle a few feathers.