SISTERS EXPOSE GRIM TRUTHS OF OUR CIVIL WAR
I‘Not purely a history play but history told through the eyes of three victims’
Outrage
On demand online
U ntil April 23 ★★★★★
f Outrage were to be treated purely as a history play, it would fail to live up to the demands of balance. But it succeeds because it’s history told through the eyes of three people who are victims of those who won the Irish Civil War, and we can’t expect the experience to be nicely balanced. At times it sails near to melodrama, but reports from Ukraine have forced us to accept events that don’t make for easy viewing or listening.
For too many years the accepted history of those who took part in the revolutionary wars from 1916 to 1922 was one of heroes who fought against an unscrupulous enemy but never stained their cause with foul acts.
They were a latter-day Fianna, bursting with truth, courage and purity of heart. But more rigorous research has uncovered unpleasant truths that disturb the sacred image.
Deirdre Kinahan’s third play, in her series about those wars, deals with three contrasting characters caught up in the Civil War of 1922.
Nell (Mary Murray) and Alice (Caitríona Ennis) are sisters from a Dublin family.
Nell is a firebrand socialist supporter of James Connolly, who has no time for landlords, businessmen or the clergy. She wants a republic, not the compromise achieved after the truce and the Treaty.
Alice is a beauty with sexual allure and an ability to write propaganda pamphlets inspiring the rebels. PJ from Kells (Naoise Dunbar) is a printer also taken up with rebellion, but even more obsessed with the lovely Alice.
Alice wants writing and action not marriage, but events force her hand. And when the peace talks don’t deliver the goods, she and Nell decide to continue the propaganda onslaught on British rule, despite PJ’s acceptance of the Treaty.
But the major unseen character in the story is a rebel who later supports the Free State government and, as a soldier, achieves the authority to ravish women and inflict sadistic violence.
During the play he becomes less a man than the embodiment of evil, whose behaviour haunts Alice. It’s a creation, spelt out by the women in blistering language, that leaves no leeway for any of the Free State government to come out with any honour.
Justified rage is the subject, not political niceties. And it’s hard to get balance in 80 minutes of condensed history.
The play is a combination of narration and dialogue, shared between the three performers. At times the historic narration can seem overdone, but the three performers carry it off with a conviction and sense of outrage that is utterly convincing.
There’s a terrible rape scene that is played out without any unnecessary action but remains genuinely horrific. Mary Murray’s Nell and Caitríona Ennis’s Alice have an electrifying authenticity.
The ending attempts to tie up everything neatly, perhaps too neatly. But one would like to think it really happened.
‘During the play he becomes less a man than the embodiment of evil’
As if to confirm that she’s the country’s most prolific playwright, Deirdre Kinahan has another play coming up at the beginning of June, Bloody Yesterday, written specially for Rex Ryan’s Glass Mask Theatre in Dawson Street. Inspired by a true story, it depicts the broken relationship between a mother and a daughter that explores loss, estrangement, resilience, the strength of family love. and the influence of music in memory. It is directed by Rex Ryan and features Elizabeth Moynihan and Sinéad Keegan.
■ Bloody Yesterday, May 2–28. See glassmasktheatre.com