Cassandra Lewis

I visited Irish theatres four consecutive Monday evenings with my writing program.

At The Gate, the most elegant theatre in Dublin, we saw W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife.

The more contemporary, cutting edge plays are performed at The Peacock, which is in the basement of The Abbey Theatre. There, we saw Blue Orange, by Joe Penhall. This was by far the best of the four plays. It was a brilliant exploration of insanity and power dynamics in institutional settings.

We saw Brian Friel’s A Month in the Country and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at The Abbey Theatre.

(This is not the original building or location as you might have gathered from the photo). The Abbey Theatre was at the very top of my list of sites to see in Dublin before I arrived. It was founded in 1904 by Lady Augusta Gregory and W.B. Yeats. Its creation was part of the Celtic revival–a movement that sought to establish a national identity highlighting Ireland’s traditional past and its distinctness from England. It was controversial because many of the plays were seen as propaganda rather than art.

The Abbey Theatre was unlike other theatres where only the rich could attend. At The Abbey, all classes enjoyed the performances and it became a forum for discussion and even riots. The most infamous example was when J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World opened there. The audience found it offensive and the police were called in to break up the fighting in the theatre.

Sadly, it’s become a tourist trap, showing badly directed plays. But for me, The Abbey Theatre will always represent what is possible when driven, creative people get together to try to change the world with art.