Marina Carr in the US: Perception, Conflict and Culture in Irish Theatre Abroad

Melissa Sihra

Now, more than ever before, there is a fascination with what it means to be Irish. This can be traced in no small way to the immense popularity of Irish theatre world-wide. From the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 by poet W.B. Yeats and playwright Augusta Gregory, Irish drama has been consumed with producing and interrogating notions of ‘Irishness’. This tendency towards the self-referential has not diminished and it is important to consider the ways in which staging Ireland today invokes both explicit, and at times more subtle, ideological, often contentious issues of representation which are fundamental to how the culture is processed. Each production and re-production of an Irish play, whether in Ireland or abroad, explores and performs the key question ‘What is ‘Ireland?’, enabling, as Colin Graham observes, ‘Ireland [to] become a plenitude of images, replicating itself for continual consumption’.¹⁵¹ This essay will consider the reception of a number of recent productions of the plays of contemporary Irish dramatist Marina Carr in the United States. One such production, the Gate Theatre/Druid presentation of Carr’s 2000 drama On Raftery’s Hill, was directed by Garry Hynes and toured to the Island: Arts from Ireland Festival in Washington in May 2000. The other productions that will be discussed are American rather than Irish touring shows; however, these too involve the broader representational politics of culture and performance.

Diverse responses to key Irish plays open up a way of exploring the complex politics of performing ‘Ireland’. A comment made by a patron in an audience-survey questionnaire at one of Marina Carr’s plays in Pittsburgh in 2001 brings together the central issues regarding the often divided and resistant responses to Carr’s work in the United States, and gets to the heart of considering Irishness on the stage. The comment reads as follows:

Very positively disgusting. The Irish may drink and swear and fight but surely not as they were portrayed in the play (if that’s what you call it). My kind of Irish are not interested in such trash.¹⁵²

The play in question is Portia Coughlan, which was produced by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre Company in March 2001. While this patron’s response is extreme, it importantly identifies an essential ontological investment in a ‘kind of Irishness’ that Carr’s work ostensibly desecrates. The equation of the content of the play with the underlined word ‘trash’ is revealing, identifying the work with waste-matter and connoting undesirability and excess. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva discusses the nature of repulsion aroused by residues, or what she calls ‘the remainder’, highlighting their potential:

Remainders are residues of something but especially of someone. They pollute on account of incompleteness … The remainder is a strongly ambivalent notion … defilement as well as re-birth, abjection as much as high purity.

Kristeva argues that the remainder is:

a challenge to our mono-theistic and mono-logical universes [where] such a mode of thinking apparently needs the ambivalence of remainder if it is not to become enclosed within One single-level symbolics.¹⁵³

The positive disgust felt by this patron, and their association of the drama with rubbish or waste-matter, points to the containable, monological, or ‘One single-level symbolics’ of Irish culture that Carr’s representation seemingly exceeds and challenges.

The crucial part of this quotation is the subjective notion of Irishness that is implied in ‘my kind of Irish’. If the politics of identity and authenticity are predicated upon the dynamic of exclusion, it would seem that there is a specific kind of Irishness to which Portia Coughlan does not relate. The second part of the quotation ‘The Irish may drink and swear and fight but surely not as they were portrayed in the play (if that’s what you call it)’, would lead one to believe that there are ‘acceptable’ levels and types of fighting, swearing and drinking that do occur in Ireland and which, again, this play exceeds in, or deviates from, in terms of an innate Irish moral sensibility. The final notion, of calling into question whether this is a ‘real’ play at all, reveals an implicit association of ‘permissible’ representation with a privileged romantic and idealistic sensibility.

Such conflict occurs when a playwright’s artistic vision confronts the spectator’s sense of cultural identity and ‘authenticity’, and alienates or removes the spectator from their subjective comfort-zone, as occurred with J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in both Ireland and America in the last century. Carr’s mature plays may be described as heightened realism, but realism nonetheless. Her characters inhabit spaces that are neither anachronistic nor atavistic, but which depict a deterioration of certainty in contemporary Irish society. Each one of Carr’s plays explicitly reveals the rupture or increasing void created by the diminished authorities of church, family and state in Ireland. While Carr’s theatre may privilege the remote, the rural, the local and the mythic, her vision is fundamentally recalcitrant to ahistorical bucolic and romantic representations of ‘Irishness’, most specifically in terms of landscape/place, language, the family, patriarchy and the Irish woman and/or mother figure. Evidently, it is this cultural and representational renegotiation that precipitates and exacerbates an identifiable diasporic trauma amongst certain Irish-American audiences. In her recent examination of Irish society, Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21^st Century, Ivana Bacik refers to Thomas Cahill’s 1995 ‘emerald-tinted’ US best-seller How the Irish Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.¹⁵⁴ Bacik goes on to say that the study:

leaves a cloying feeling, similar to that evoked by misty-eyed reminiscences of ‘the oul’ sod’ by those who have never lived in this country. We know it is stretching the green fabric of patriotism beyond its elastic point. Yet this account of the unique Irish civilising influence holds sway with a large section of the Irish-American diaspora, in whose eyes we often see ourselves reflected from abroad. We may well be cynical about their romantic notions, but his highly skewed take on Irish history retains its influence and even thrives in some places, which means it is an image we must contend with.¹⁵⁵

The response to the Pittsburgh Portia Coughlan is revealing. In a post-show discussion with the company’s artistic director, Andrew Paul, a few notable issues came to light. He noted that: audiences [had] some difficulty with the structure of the play, and with the relentless intensity of the performance. Several patrons commented on their inability to connect or empathize with the characters.¹⁵⁶

During the performances that I attended, as I have noted elsewhere, audience members laughed uncomfortably at swear words and, in particular, at the image of Portia and Gabriel making love in the womb.¹⁵⁷ While positively received by the critics, the reviews tended to cast the writing in a ‘rather gloomy, grim, light’.¹⁵⁸ Chief critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Christopher Rawson, whose notice was headed ‘Portia is Drenched in Grim Truths’, commented: ‘Carr reminds me of Beckett – a great desolation is painfully and poetically probed without hope of deep change’.¹⁵⁹ It seems that the word ‘grim’ is a death-knell to shows in the United States and Paul believes that the tone of the critical response was a ‘deterrent to the relatively conservative Pittsburgh casual arts consumer’. He continues that, ‘Comedies and titles with instant name-recognition always perform better at the box-office’.¹⁶⁰ He saw the humour inherent in the writing emerge as the run progressed, until later audience members described the play as ‘hilarious’. In considering the reception of Portia Coughlan, it seems that the lyrical quality of the writing, the women’s roles and the ebullient moments of humour are what most resonated with the audience, while the structure, with Portia’s death revealed in the middle, and the seeming lack of possibility for change or transformation (and in the case of this production, the fact that there was no interval), the subject-matter of incestuous relations and the abundance of alcohol and cursing, are what prevented audiences from relating fully to the work.¹⁶¹

In terms of the reception of Carr’s plays in the United States, I note a tension between what critics and audiences have praised as being, on the one hand, Carr’s theatrical writing skill with, on the other, the content of the plots, which have often alienated, and in some cases revolted audience members who have displayed difficulty in reconciling the lyrical elements of the plays with the uncompromising nature of the story-lines. Paul elaborates:

It took me several years to develop the company to the degree that I could take risks with this type of raw drama. I think the play will challenge Pittsburgh audiences, and that is a good thing.¹⁶²

Paul, who had seen On Raftery’s Hill in Washington the previous year, noted how ‘Its disturbing tone clearly unsettled the audience’. He went on to say:

I think Carr’s voice is unique, and will take more time to establish itself among American theatre-goers. Her vision of Ireland is certainly not one the Irish-Americans want to see and embrace. We seem to prefer Frank McCourt.¹⁶³

Frank McCourt’s narrative of an abject and abysmal Irish childhood in Angela’s Ashes is mediated through the lens of history, offering a relatively distant past that, in order to remain visceral and emotive yet uncontroversial, must remain in the past. McCourt’s trauma is expressed in the language of the past tense, transmitting the experience through the temporal screen of memory. He begins:

It was, of course, a miserable childhood … Out on the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick.¹⁶⁴

Carr’s plays, on the other hand, are alarming in their immediacy, an immediacy that seems to defile the diasporic investment in nostos and any comforting notion of a genuine, absolute and essential site of authentic origins. As Deirdre Mulrooney notes in a review of On Raftery’s Hill: ‘[it is] a scenario which is much more terrifying [than the faraway fantasy land of By the Bog of Cats…] because it is within the reach of reality’.¹⁶⁵ The fetishization of a notional ‘land of heart’s desire’ implied in the utterance ‘my kind of Irish’ reveals the traumatic chasm between an imagined, yet ostensibly knowable, sacred version or vision of homeland or mother-land and Carr’s depictions of an Ireland in various present states of distress, crises and transition.

The demographic of the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre Company is important, and the fact that it is the ‘Irish and Classical Theatre Company’ immediately associates the company with a specific cultural group, with a large proportion of Irish-Americans funding and subscribing to the company. The dominant characteristics of the patrons are as follows: they are an average of fifty-three years old with incomes in excess of $75,000. They are married and educated to post-graduate level.¹⁶⁶ This is not irrelevant social minutiae, but reveals to a large extent the target consumers of Irish theatre in the United States. A fairly elite and, to quote Andrew Paul, ‘conservative’ demographic can thus be identified. Key responses to Portia Coughlan in the questionnaire include:

Mysterious, perverted psychological screw-up.

Very dysfunctional, difficult to watch or empathize with characters.

Did not like the play.

More light material please – mysteries, musical comedy, inspirational.

Time sequence difficult, old lady impossible, Ugh.

No excuse for no intermission when performance over 75 minutes long – we are too old.

Very well done but so depressing.¹⁶⁷

Similarly emotive and vociferous responses resounded during the run of On Raftery’s Hill at the Island: Arts from Ireland Festival at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which ran from 13-28 May 2000. Here, popular figures of Irish culture paraded one after the other: the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, spoke about Ireland in the shadow of J.F.K. as Bill Whelan’s Riverdance joined with the music of Mary Black, Sharon Shannon, Liam Ó Maonlaí and the poetry of Seamus Heaney, against a backdrop of moody romantic images by Paul Henry, Sir William Orpen and Walter Osborne. The theatre programme of the festival was billed as follows:

From Oscar Wilde to Samuel Beckett, Irish playwrights have delivered compelling characters, exciting drama and unforgettable dialogue … theatre lovers make your plans now before the shows sell out.¹⁶⁸

Carr’s play, billed alongside Donal O’Kelly’s Catalpa and Stewart Parker’s Pentecost, was framed thus:

Ireland’s 1998 Playwright of the Year Marina Carr has created [a] potent and visceral work with indelible characters of surreal eccentricities. This American première is one you will remember for years to come.¹⁶⁹

Whatever about the play being visceral and potent, reactions certainly were, as people walked out in disbelief at the image of contemporary Ireland with which they were being confronted. The production was greeted with shocked silence, making it certainly an American premiere that would be remembered ‘for years to come’. While invitations to readings by writers such as Frank McCourt and Jennifer Johnston offered an opportunity to ‘experience the passion, pathos and profound humanity of Irish literature’ On Raftery’s Hill was seen as an atrocity upon the Ireland of the imagination.¹⁷⁰ Juxtaposing this reception with a positive local Irish review of the play, it is illuminating to see the ways in which one culture deems a work progressive and another, regressive. For the Offaly Press, Declan Meade wrote:

It is brave of Carr to take on the theme of child sexual abuse at a time when Ireland, like so many other countries, is just beginning to come to terms with its prevalence. And she is braver still in her decision to steer away from any neat resolution.¹⁷¹

Inscribed within Carr’s theatrical representation is a refusal to romanticize contemporary social realities. In her plays, domestic violence, cycles of sexual abuse, incest and death pervade most of the relationships on stage. For Carr, the notion of loss and ‘the family [are] central to the drama’.¹⁷² Carr says: ‘All of my characters tend to be outsiders’.¹⁷³ However, while Carr’s plays challenge accepted and acceptable notions of ‘Irishness’, certain aspects of her work are extremely popular in the US. It may be said that Carr’s reputation is soaring in America, especially in universities and theatre cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York. Why then, is there such a dichotomy in terms of the reception of Carr’s plays, when they are all equally violent and traumatic? It is due to the fact, as Mulrooney points out, that: [On Raftery’s Hill] courageously tackles the tough and unappealing rural Irish variety [of characters and place] as opposed to the more palatable Greek version, head on and unflinchingly.¹⁷⁴

Questions of form, as well as content, are intrinsic to how the work is mediated and received. The unanimously positive reception of Carr’s 1998 drama By the Bog of Cats…, which has enjoyed multiple sell-out productions in the United States, indicates that an immensely different kind of cultural response is operating, due to the mediating factor of the Classical origins of this play, as distinct from the contemporary context of Portia and On Raftery’s Hill.

The Chicago Irish Repertory Theatre produced the American premiere of By the Bog of Cats… in 2001. This high-profile company is not simply producing theatre, but promoting and selling access to an authentic sense of Irishness. A browse at the company website, www.irishrep.com, will reveal invitations to ‘get involved’, to attend functions with key Irish-American Chicagoans and Irish playwrights, actors and practitioners, and be a part of a community.¹⁷⁵ San José Repertory Theatre Company, which also produced the show in 2001 with Holly Hunter in the lead role, achieves similar levels of cultural association and context: San José is officially twinned with Dublin. This kind of cultural doubling, or mirroring, lends another level of authenticity to the project which is effectively commodified for consumption, again offering ‘face-time’ to major sponsors with playwrights such as Marina Carr at exclusive gala dinners and corporate receptions. Furthermore, Carr’s plays are desirable because most of them have premiered at the Abbey, Peacock or Gate Theatres in Dublin. Such positioning and artistic association is attractive to international practitioners and audiences. The Abbey Theatre, especially, has instant name-recognition in the United States, which offers further levels of cultural and artistic authenticity to the marketing project abroad in offering a product that is perceived as the very best of contemporary Irish theatre.

Audience and critic receptions of By the Bog of Cats… were unanimously positive. In the Chicago Sun-Times, a critic wrote: ‘Shakespeare was a master at orchestrating … volatile moods. The young Irish dramatist Marina Carr clearly shares his gift’.¹⁷⁶ West Coast critics commented repeatedly on the desirability of the role of Hester: ‘It is a role that every great actress would love to obtain’, noted Richard Connema.¹⁷⁷ Similarly, with the other productions of By the Bog of Cats… the scale of the narrative was praised: Carr has emerged quietly as one of Ireland’s finest on the strength of her ability to draw characters and situations on an operatic scale.¹⁷⁸

It would appear then that By the Bog of Cats…, which is loosely based on Euripides’ Medea, seems to be a less controversial depiction of contemporary Ireland than On Raftery’s Hill or Portia Coughlan, due to the mythic distance which is afforded it. A contemporary version of Medea culturally contextualizes, and in a sense, validates, the narrative content of infanticide, on-stage suicide, attempted rape and incest contained in By the Bog of Cats…. While many audience members left at the interval, or indeed walked out, of On Raftery’s Hill when it played in Washington, the same action of attempted rape, which occurred in both US stagings of By the Bog of Cats… (with Xavier physically forcing himself upon an incapacitated Hester in Act Three, graphically simulating an act of sexual violation), did not cause the same audience reaction. This raises the question as to whether on-stage violence and violation is more palatable when filtered through a transhistorical, Euripidean lens, than off-stage, ‘un-Classically’ mediated suicide, in the case of Portia Coughlan. While By the Bog of Cats… is considered ‘fearless’, ‘sweepingly theatrical’ and ‘courageous’, Portia is viewed as grim, unrelenting, hopeless and despairing.

Carr’s heightened and excessive theatrical explorations of violence, death, loss and abjection are something for which she has been continually criticized and yet her representation of these immense themes is what has confirmed her central position in contemporary Irish theatre. Riana O’Dwyer comments that Garry Hynes, who has been centrally involved in the development of scripts by women both in the Druid Theatre in Galway and during her tenure as the Artistic Director in the Abbey Theatre, has identified some limitations in the scripts that she has read.

Back in 1995, Hynes significantly complained: ‘I just sometimes long for a woman to write, please, on a broader, more public, more epic scale’.¹⁷⁹ In terms of Carr’s uncompromising and, at times, brutal dramaturgic confrontations, Frank McGuinness observes: ‘Seeing the development of Marina Carr – that has been, I think, the development of a major new voice, a fearless voice, a woman who will take on enormous challenges’.¹⁸⁰

‘Diaspora’ has its roots in the Greek diaspeirein, meaning disperse, and the Irish theatrical diaspora continues to disperse, and perpetuate or regenerate various conceptions of Irishness. As Bacik observes:

There are many Irelands, just as there are many facets of Irish identity, and to attempt to describe a collective form of ‘Irishness’ represents an exercise in gross generalization.¹⁸¹

If theatre does not ask difficult questions and interrogate our assumptions, it is redundant. Carr’s plays are difficult, but crucial in their vocalization of the immense recent changes in attitude in Irish society. Lyn Gardner says of the recent Olivier Award nominated production of By the Bog of Cats… in London’s Wyndham Theatre: ‘What marks out Carr’s work is her knowing compassion for the damaged, the distraught, for those who howl and rage as they rush towards their inevitable doom.’¹⁸²

It is crucial that theatrical representations of Ireland are not ossified by stable and paralysing preconceptions of culture, context and expression. The artist’s vision must be allowed expression, even if it is considered by some to be a ‘mysterious, perverted psychological screw-up’. Carr says:

There is a place for the moral high ground, but it is not in art. You have to let the characters have their say. Plays are written with the imagination, not with the head.¹⁸³

The traumatic chasmic gaps of authority in the late twentieth century are reflected and expressed in Marina Carr’s plays, and this immediacy and renegotiation of what Irishness is will continue to provoke a complex and necessary set of responses, as both Irish and American audiences attempt to reconcile past perceptions with present realities and future possibilities.

Extract From: Irish Theatre on Tour, edited by Nicholas Grene and Christopher Morash (2005)

Cross Reference: Following essays on Carr, plus other essays by Fitzpatrick, McMullan and others

See Also: Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices By Women In Ireland, edited by Miriam Haughton and Mária Kurdi and Performing Feminisms in Contemporary Ireland, edited by Lisa Fitzpatrick