Bangin' On with Mad Cyril

I don't like to say this, son, because assigning characteristics according to national identity is kinda racist, but I can't help wishing Irish scripted theatre would stop nipping my napper. It's like they had a vote and decided that the best drama is written by a pissed up history teacher.

Yeah, I know: it's the bardic tradition, the influence of the Abbey Theatre, but when I'm praying that the revolutionary hero in Northern Star would put his head in the fucking noose, the deconstruction of political mythology is kinda lost. Sam Beckett, who knew his way around dramatic structure, stopped writing in English because he found it too easy to just ramble and impress. If only more Irish playwrights would impose limitations on their scripts - like a maximum word count.

It's a shame because Rough Magic's production has some really

smart ideas. A few too many, perhaps, but nothing that editing the speeches wouldn't cure. Yeah, I'm breaking the law of the critic there, suggesting a specific cure rather than identifying a symptom. But round about that time that Henry McCraken started describing how it felt to be in prison under a blanket, my mind collapsed under the weight of words like an Ikea chair when the UKIP MEP for Scotland sits down. All bets are off. 

Stewart Parker's script starts with a standard Brechtian riff: the first scene has a description of the events as theatre, explaining how the cast is going to jump between roles and the mechanics of theatrical ilusion. The scenography is allusive, with flats and simple props and a big sign saying STAGE LEFT. The point is clear: this is not naturalistic theatre. It's pretend.

He follows this up by repeatedly pointing out the close connection between acting and politics, sometimes in cheeky jokes. The protagonist McCraken reflects on his life, recognising his failure and analysing how his life would be recast as heroic, despite his recognition of his failure. Parker has a gift for poetic language - a tavern scene reaches to cod-Shakespearean heights - and the different styles of each episode keeps the energy flowing...

And the preoccupation with history, expressed by McCraken but also a feature of revolutionary romantics, is cleverly incorporated, through anachronistic costumes (one geezer looking like Oscar Wilde and giving it the dandy banter, another couple all dressed up like IRA hit-men from the 1970s) and the stylistic shifts. That scene were McCracken monologues under a blanket links Bobby Sands and Beckett, if only my brain could take it in. 

I'm just not sure what Northern Star is meant to be. It could be a

clever bit of epic theatre, like Brecht suggests. Epic theatre is opposed to tragic theatre, in which events unfold with a painful inevitability (so said Aristotle). Epic theatre shows a series of events, but allows the audience to consider other possibilities. The first scene, and the scenography, totally suggested this.

But given that it starts with the hero banging on about getting hung, and it ends with him getting hung, it is kind of inevitable. And with all the stylistic shifts, it hard to take it all in, let alone consider alternative realities.

More effectively, it deconstructs the myth of the revolutionary. By framing each episode with McCracken's cynical reflections, the glorious progress of a warrior-philosopher is exposed as a series of failures. This is undermined by the swagger of McCracken, as he bangs birds to uncover spies, leads a tiny army against insurmountable odds, shows principle in prison and has his girlfriend getting in and out of bed trying to persuade him to have some kip.

The rejection of the heroic is the most bracing aspect of the show. While the egalitarian philosophy of the United Irish movement is never mocked - even in the lengthy conversations that detail divisions and ironies - McCraken is given a human, rather than iconic, representation. His doubts, his misgivings, and final rejection of the armed solution to oppression, all combine to picture a man tormented by his legacy. Northern Star outstays its welcome, perhaps because of its ambition, but it is energised by a desire to use theatre to communicate complex ideas.

Inishmore at Midday

I would expect political theatre to be relevant and vibrant at the moment: not only have I heard Marxists claim that fascism can be defined as “politics as theatre”, the encroaching idiocy of the British government – currently under the impression that austerity is the same thing as doing favours for your mates in big business – makes politics, for once, remotely interesting.

And yet both the Lyceum and the Tron have had productions that point at the limitations of theatre when it attempts to deal with real life issue. Admittedly, both The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Minute After Midday are chasing “the Irish Question” and the impact of terrorism on ordinary lives, subjects emotive and massive: their impact, unfortunately, is lessened by the intrusion of theatricality and the stilted conventions of the stage.

Aside from the content, the productions share strong casts and direction that is competent and straight-forward. The Lieutenant may go for the same humour that marks Tarantino’s attitude to violence while Minute is serious to the extent of being self-regarding. There’s also a shared intensity and attention to detail. Whether it is a cat’s supposed enthusiasm for Frosties or the meaning of a young girl’s pink dress, both scripts focus on the importance of the small in the face of horror.

But while The Lieutenant descends into bloody farce, Minute is determined to bring home the emotional turmoil. A survivor, a bereaved relative and a bomber all relive the day when a small town was bombed, moving obviously towards an almost redemptive finale. The irony of civil war is explicit – of course the terrorists end up killing someone they knew and even liked – the faint hope of heroic acts in the face of death is celebrated. The simple set – three actors, three chairs, simple lighting – does nothing to dispel the sense that Moments is a lecture. And so theatre, rather than bringing the political to life, diminishes the genuine experience of a very serious and disturbing event. Like that atrocious moment in Scottish Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet, when documentary footage of an earthquake was used to conjure intensity for the fictional suicide of two fictional characters, there is a point when theatre only trivialises real suffering for a shallow emotional punch.

Over in The Lieutenant, characters are blinded, shot and tortured for comic effect. Martin McDonagh's script – apparently rejected lest it undermine the Irish Peace Process – uses absurd comedy to snipe at the motivation of Republican terrorists. It’s a bitter, shrill comedy: the soldiers are sociopaths, more concerned over the life of a cat than any number of humans, constantly deluding themselves that they cling to a higher goal. This Ireland is populated by serial killers who simply found a cause – the soulful bomber of Minute is exposed as a myth, replaced by characters who could happily appear in sequels to Saw.

Yet the sharp script is undermined by some weak theatricality. Guns sound from speakers. A scene change becomes a false ending. Blood and gore is obviously fake. A corpse cut into pieces is a comedy prop.

A tighter production could have surmounted these problems – as Minute could have remembered it was a play not a Truth and Reconciliation panel – and taken the ideas further. Mistaking satire as straight entertainment is as dangerous as mistaking theatre for a rhetorical exercise. Either way, this political theatre is not the vibrant exposition of crucial ideas.