RISING MOON SHINES ON THE POLITICAL PAST
The Rising Of The Moon Bewley’s Cafe Theatre Until 6 HHHHH
L‘A mutual interest in Irish ballads provides an opportunity to ease the tension’
adyGregory,co-founderof The Abbey, has come back into focus this year with this Bewley’s production of one of her early plays, and the Abbey’s commission of six new plays by six Irish female writers, labelled The Gregory Project. So far, however, no Gregory plays are in the Abbey line-up; they’re mostly suitable for small venues.
The Rising of the Moon, written in 1907 is a short work, lasting just over half an hour and the title is a clear reference to the developing political climate at the time. With elements of humour, but politically serious, it pitches nationalistic theory and activity against the reality of earning a living and supporting a family in a dangerous job of policeman.
The scene is a moonlit pier at night with tension in the air. A police sergeant and his fellow cop are on the lookout for a dangerous Irish rebel who has escaped from prison and has a £100 reward on his head. The sergeant stays alone in the darkness around some steps leading down to the sea where a suspicious boat might land.
The younger policeman has the task of pinning up posters about the escapee around the area.
The two policemen are dressed in modern style. Is it an attempt to make the situation universal and outside time? In fact, it’s just an unnecessary distraction.
A young man appears, an unlikely ballad singer looking for money, annoying the sergeant who doesn’t want anything interfering with the job in hand.
Their talk gets on to the subject of rewards for capturing felons, the dangers in a policeman’s life, and the difficult business of taking sides in a time of political unrest. Not the kind of talk the sergeant appreciates. He’s uncomfortable enough as things are.
Oisín Thompson is impressive as the chattering enigmatic balladeer trying to undermine the sergeant’s personal and official situation. Michael Tient embodies the sergeant’s uncomfortable dilemma in a tense situation: seeing the possibilities for promotion and sworn to uphold the law, while grappling with his patriotic feelings about Irish politics. Their mutual interest in Irish ballads provides a brief opportunity to relax the tension.
Eoghan Carrick’s understated direction had me wondering if long pauses meant players had forgotten their lines or if it was just a means of building up tension over their respective positions. What matters, in dramatic terms, is not the outcome of their conversation but how they get there.
Molly Whelan as the junior policeman manages to look and sound acceptably male for the era .
The play is not a major work, but it was clearly Lady Gregory’s method of playing with her own political allegiances, and it presents a recognisable security
‘The play was Lady Gregory’s method of playing with her political allegiances’
situation very succinctly. There are some light moments, but watching it I was reminded that twelve years after the play’s first production, the War of Independence was launched during the first meeting of the new Dáil, by the killing of two policemen at Soloheadbeg.
The play is written in that kind of western Irish dialect, a mixture of English with Irish language construction, that John Millington Synge specialised in; (‘Is it a poor man like me …to have the name that he took a reward?’). It’s toned down in this production.
For the kind of drama that relished that kind of dialogue, it might be worth seeing John Ford’s 1957 film The Rising of the Moon, in which Lady Gregory’s play, expanded, and set in 1921, is the third in a trio of Irish stories. To give it more audience appeal, the film has Tyrone Power introducing each segment: he apparently had some tenuous link to Ireland. All the big-name Irish performers at the time were churned out for the film – Noel Purcell, Jimmy O’Dea, Maureen Potter, Jack McGowran and Cyril Cusack.
It’s worth seeing, if only as a museum piece follow-up to The Third Man.
But there’s a case to be made for reviving one of Lady Gregory’s early comic works, such as Spreading the News, an over-the-top farce about local gossip and its possibilities for misunderstanding.
It’s the sort of stuff we used to be very touchy about, but with some judicious editing it could still be very entertaining.