Observe the Sons of Ulster: Historical Stages

Helen Lojek

When Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme premiered on the Abbey’s Peacock Stage in 1985, the play received widespread praise and notoriety as a powerful dramatic consideration of Ulster Protestant soldiers fighting in World War I. The fact that the drama was written by a Catholic from the Republic of Ireland, at a time when unionist/nationalist tensions in Northern Ireland dominated the headlines, cried out for commentary, garnering the play social and political as well as artistic responses. Since then, productions have become a bell-wether for cultural discussions both in the English speaking world and in Europe. Such discussions go beyond nationalist-unionist relations: the Battle of the Somme, gay rights, European politics, and the War in Iraq have also been major contexts. The play has inevitably been seen through the multi-faceted lens created when text, productions, and audiences come together at particular cultural/historical moments. The ease with which different observers have located different themes is one sign of the play’s value and complexity.

Lionel Pilkington notes that Sons of Ulster was written ‘in the wake of a hostile unionist reaction to the New Ireland Forum’, and ‘elevated to the main Abbey Theatre stage just one month after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement’. Pilkington’s point is that the Irish national theatre leaned toward ‘ideological conformity to the political interests of the state’, and he argues his perspective persuasively in relation to various productions.⁵²⁶ However, although McGuinness has been remarkably willing to discuss the play’s origins and import, he does not connect it with either the Forum or the Agreement. The play endorses no particular step toward resolving tensions. It does raise issues that were (and are) ‘political interests’ not just of the state but also of numerous citizens on both sides of the border. That fact, rather than manipulations by the Abbey or the state, seems the likely explanation for the play’s political impact.

Nevertheless, its first production established Sons of Ulster as a model for cross-cultural understanding, and subsequent Irish productions emphasized this aspect. The programme for the premiere included the Roll of Honour of the ‘Invincible True Blues’ of Coleraine,⁵²⁷ World War I photographs, Psalms 82 and 88, Wilfred Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’, and Emily Dickinson’s ‘The Soul unto itself’. The programme, then, emphasized World War I and the play’s religious dimension, though only Keith Jeffery seems to have noted implications that the play has a religious dimension beyond the simplistic political/religious split between Catholics and Protestants. Despite the programme’s silence about the contemporaneous movement toward peace in Northern Ireland, most commentators made that connection. The Hampstead (London) production in 1986 included the Psalms, information about the Boa Island statues, quotes from World War I writings – and a timeline that, jumping from 1920 to 1985, mentioned both the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Such direct references to cross-cultural understanding have continued to increase.

In order to perceive the play as an emblem of cross-cultural understanding, audiences need to know something about the fierceness of tensions between Irish factions, and about the extent to which McGuinness’s life illustrates those tensions. A Catholic from the Republic, he wrote about Ulstermen. A native of Donegal, which was separated by partition from the rest of Ulster, he is himself a Son of Ulster – ‘from that part of Ulster which is within the Irish Republic’, as Keith Jeffery put it in a 1985 review. Early press reports mentioned these facts regularly, even if the programmes did not. The extent to which the play is a view across cultures is also emphasized by McGuinness’s oft-quoted comment that he had begun it knowing the last line would be ‘I love my Ulster’, and that he wanted to create a character who would find it as difficult to say that as McGuinness himself would have.⁵²⁸ In an Abbey production, there is the added layer of watching actors from the Republic’s national theatre cross cultural barriers in order to portray Ulster soldiers. Occasionally Northern Irish reviewers complained about the Abbey players’ accents,⁵²⁹ but that is part of the point: the Republic’s national theatre actors were stretching to embody Ulstermen who would have heard in their accents the tones of the enemy. Most programmes have provided information about the Battle of the Somme, but audiences must bring with them the late twentieth century awareness that provides such ironic layers for the play, and the cross-cultural elements clearly work best when audiences feel them deeply, without the need for critical preparation.

If audiences in the Republic were captured by the play’s importance as a demonstration of cross-cultural understanding, Northern Irish unionists were more likely to respond to it as a rare and respectful view of their culture – a culture not often presented on stage and often stereotypically regarded as uninteresting, lacking artistic imagination, and scarred by negative emotions. Charles Fitzgerald, writing about the Abbey’s first production, suggested to Belfast readers that the play does for Ulster what O’Casey and Yeats did for Ireland, what Shakespeare did for England, Longfellow for North America – it puts the whole Protestant ethos into perspective …. It is a play that does for Ulster what Ulster’s Sons did in Flanders and it is the final, superb tribute to their sacrifice. It must be seen here.⁵³⁰

The 1985 production to which Fitzgerald was reacting played to enthusiastic reviews in both Belfast and Coleraine, but the Lyric Theatre’s 1990 production was the first professional staging by a Northern Irish company.⁵³¹ It too was warmly received by reviewers. Though he did not particularly like the Lyric production, Fitzgerald again concluded that Sons of Ulster was ‘the play of our time, about our place and about us and should not be missed’.⁵³²

Reviewing the 1986 Hampstead Theatre production, Christopher Edwards noted that Sons of Ulster (which he contrasted with the ‘anti-English propaganda’ of Brian Friel’s Translations and Ron Hutchinson’s Rat in the Skull) ‘subtly and successfully’ dramatized Protestant experience ‘without grinding any axes’⁵³³. Several years later Joe McMinn pointed out that the play ‘was greeted with delight and relief – as if, finally, a tradition not associated with imagination or poetry was getting a chance to be heard with respect’.⁵³⁴

The Northern Irish Troubles and Protestant unionist concern that their culture be favourably portrayed were not the only contexts in which Sons of Ulster appeared. The play premiered just before the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, when commemorative journeys were taking World War I soldiers (most of them from Ulster) back to the French battlefield, and when the Irish Republic was seeking ways to commemorate the World War I contributions of its soldiers. The anniversary of the Easter Rebellion, which coincided with the Battle of the Somme, was also coming up. Particularly among unionist commentators, connections with Ulster’s role in World War I were tremendously important. David Nowlan’s Irish Times review of the Abbey’s original production described Sons of Ulster as ‘one of the most comprehensive attacks ever made in the theatre on Ulster Protestantism’ – a judgment that touched off a storm of controversy. Kevin Barry (then an editor of the Irish Literary Supplement) and Jennifer Johnston (whose 1974 How Many Miles to Babylon? is based partly on a relative’s World War I diaries) wrote to praise the play’s view of Ulster Protestantism. Nowlan defended (explained?) himself, and Northern Irish poet Michael Longley lauded the play:

My own father survived the Trenches, and over the years I tried to come to terms imaginatively with his memories and with accounts I have picked up elsewhere of the Ulster Division at the Somme. In light of this preoccupation I feel honour-bound to praise Frank McGuinness’s abundant, profound and humane study of cultural confusions and military heroism. This play moved me to tears.⁵³⁵

Subsequent reviews in other publications, although they do not mention Nowlan, were in part responses to his critique.

Northern Irish productions and reviews continued to emphasize the play’s use of the Battle of the Somme, generally regarded as a key event in the history of Ulster Protestantism. For its 1990 production, the Lyric displayed World War I photographs and memorabilia from Belfast’s Farset Community Centre (which had earlier organized a commemoration trip to the Somme), and the director pointed to the play’s importance as an examination of the past as well as a message for the present.⁵³⁶ Ian Hill, in the Guardian, compared the play’s events to Vietnam, but Irish reviews were more likely to note its connection to the Somme and its importance as an expression of cross-cultural understanding.⁵³⁷

The play’s presentation of gay lovers has also resonated in Irish culture. The 1980s witnessed the explosion of AIDS, and a mounting campaign to decriminalize homosexual behaviour in both Irelands.⁵³⁸ Discussion of McGuinness as a gay playwright and of the play’s presentation of gay love became increasingly open. A 1990 Red Kettle production in Waterford coincided with the Lyric’s production in Belfast. Few Northern Irish reviews mentioned the characters’ sexuality, though Ian Hill in the Guardian noted the ‘sweat of incipient homosexuality’, and Sheila Hamilton in the Communist Party Weekly noted that Craig is Pyper’s ‘lover’.

Mary O’Donnell confronted the issue directly in Dublin’s Sunday Tribune, describing Red Kettle’s production as weakened because the ‘homosexuality seems fudged at the very moment when it should provide radiance and dimension to the bonding which takes place between [Pyper and Craig]’ (italics in original)⁵³⁹. O’Donnell does not mention the Lyric’s portrayal of gay characters, which may mean that she found it more successful, though in general she preferred the Red Kettle production. In 1991 McGuinness protested that ‘recent productions of Sons of Ulster censored Pyper’s relationship with Craig’.⁵⁴⁰ It seems likely the reference is to Red Kettle, but he used the plural, so there may have been other portrayals he found problematic. In 1985 only Charles Fitzgerald had mentioned sexuality in Sons of Ulster, but the 1990 productions coincided with increased discussion of gay rights in both Irelands, and the attention of some reviewers was drawn to the issues.

The Abbey’s 1994 production premiered by coincidence at a time when a lasting peace in Northern Ireland seemed possible.⁵⁴¹ Treatment of the play as an icon of cross-cultural understanding, however, was no coincidence. The gala opening night included special guests from both sides of the border and both sides of the conflict—politicians, well-known entertainers, and twenty-four community workers from Belfast’s generally unionist-Protestant Shankill Road. Recalling that occasion four years later, David Ervine, who was at the time political spokesperson for Northern Ireland’s Progressive Unionist Party, showed his awareness of various contexts:

Even in the homosexuality that [McGuinness] introduced he was saying we weren’t all the same; we were all different – naïve, uncomplicated people having to deal with complicated circumstances. But he was also saying to the nationalist community: this did happen, and it happened to our people, and it didn’t happen quite the way you think it happened. Explore. Understand … We were in a new era.⁵⁴²

In conjunction with the 1994 production, The Irish Times published a full page of commentary (including assessments from eight well-known commentators) that emphasized cross-cultural understanding.⁵⁴³ Dorothea Melvin’s programme notes suggested the play’s importance ‘to us here and now, in a time of hope and uncertainty, fraught with all kinds of expectations and challenged by so many other legacies from the past’⁵⁴⁴. The programme also included World War I photographs and a discussion by Kevin Myers in which he pointed to what he felt were historical inaccuracies. Myers also devoted an Irish Times column and his comments on RTE Radio’s The Arts Show to anachronisms he believed falsified the play’s view of Ulster Protestantism⁵⁴⁵. Such discussion indicates the emphasis on getting things ‘right’ about the past, so that Irish people could move forward into cross-cultural understanding and a more peaceful future.

When the Abbey remounted the play in 1995, Director Patrick Mason noted that it was in deliberate conjunction with the IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland.

I decided to revive the play when news of the IRA ceasefire came in and I rang Frank and I said, look, I know we were going to do this play in twelve months time but I think we should do it now[,] and on … the night of our first preview, the Loyalist ceasefire was called and in a strange way ever since this production has gone with all the ups and downs of the ceasefire.⁵⁴⁶

This production also toured. At the Edinburgh Festival, almost every review mentioned its relationship to the ceasefire. Most found hope in the play’s effort to create cross-cultural understanding, but Charles Spencer found the characters’ adherence to ancient loyalties cause for ‘despair that a lasting peace will … be achieved’.⁵⁴⁷ Almost every review also mentioned the production’s portrayal of gay lovers, which Benedict Nightingale found ‘over-explicit’ and Nicholas de Jongh described as ‘rather camp and outrageous’⁵⁴⁸. The play arrived in London on the eve of the eightieth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and (ironically) just as IRA bombs were once more exploding there. It toured to Blackpool, Liverpool, Malvern, Plymouth, and Belfast. Months later McGuinness responded ‘to recent English newspaper descriptions of the play, claiming it was all about homosexuality, with a dismissive “grow up”’.⁵⁴⁹ Ten years after its premiere, Sons of Ulster had achieved notoriety in Ireland and the UK both for its push toward cross-cultural understanding, and for its portrayal of gay love. French reactions, however, focused elsewhere.

In Paris at the 1996 Imaginaire Irlandais celebration, the Abbey production was performed in English, with French subtitles, and the text of McGuinness’s play appeared in a French translation by Joseph Long and Alexandra Poulain.⁵⁵⁰ French President Jacques Chirac and Irish President Mary Robinson attended the tremendously successful opening performance, which coincided with Robinson’s birthday and which Jocelyn Clarke reported ended with demands for ‘auteur, auteur!’⁵⁵¹

The play was featured on the front pages of Le Monde and Le Figaro, but French press coverage was quite different than Irish and English coverage. Certainly the French knew of the start of the peace talks, but the French press focused not on Irish politics but on European politics. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty had strengthened European unity, and debate about its ratification had revealed the Irish as increasingly willing to challenge the authority of the Catholic church. Ireland’s economic boom had begun in 1995. Now, in 1996, Ireland was about to assume the presidency of the European Union. Sons of Ulster had premiered in the 1980s, in an economically depressed and socially conservative Republic which had just reaffirmed its opposition to divorce and abortion. By the 1990s, when the play arrived in France, Ireland was prosperous, and legal restrictions on divorce and abortion had eased. Heavily Catholic France was interested in the role of religion – in the play and in Ireland – and there were reminders that Ulster’s soldiers had come to the Somme to resist the German invasion of France. Under a headline pointing to the need for liberation from malignant (haine) nationalism and conservative religion, Catherine Bédarida noted in Le Monde that McGuinness’s emergence as a playwright had coincided with Ireland’s entry into the European Union, and with the country’s exit from post-colonial isolation and poverty.⁵⁵² Olivier Schmitt described the play as ‘the best work of an author representative of the rebirth of Irish theatre’ and quoted McGuinness about changes in Ireland: people no longer allowed the church to dictate their lives and the climate was freer, so that he had no need to go into exile as had earlier Irish writers: ‘I can write without fear of censure and lead my private life as I choose,’ he stated.⁵⁵³

McGuinness also noted the prevalence of racism in Ireland, paralleling Irish prejudice against the English with prejudice against Blacks and Asians elsewhere. Schmitt suggested that racism was one traditional Irish value that the play attacked, implying that a mark of McGuinness’s modernity was his move beyond that traditional value. French struggles with an increasing Arab population were an unstated context, but the need to escape inherited loyalties and move toward a federalized Europe were more immediate concerns. The French press seems not to have mentioned the play’s presentation of gay characters, focusing instead primarily on ways Sons of Ulster showcased new European values, and Ireland’s emergence into the modern world. Hope for a breakthrough in Northern Ireland’s peace talks was simply another indication of Ireland’s modernization. French perception of the play as innovative in form and progressive in theme was no doubt one factor that led a year later to the awarding of the French Order of Arts and Letters to McGuinness.

The French interest in McGuinness as a herald of new directions in Irish theatre parallels the assessment of Christopher Morash, who characterizes Irish theatre in the 1970s as ‘strangely out of date’ and cites McGuinness as one of the ‘new Irish Theatre’ playwrights whose university backgrounds enabled them to ‘generate a different sense of tradition’.⁵⁵⁴ By 1996, when Sons of Ulster appeared in Paris, this ‘new Irish Theatre’ was at its height. Five years earlier, Maeliosa Stafford, having left Galway’s Druid Theatre to work in Australia, used similar terms to describe his decision to stage Sons of Ulster there: ‘I want to get away from the stereotype of people’s associations with Irish theatre.… modern Irish writers explore a wealth of subjects and issues.’⁵⁵⁵

The Abbey’s production went from Paris to Brussels, where it was sponsored in part by the Northern Ireland Group, an organization of ex-patriots living in Belgium. Connections with the peace process were prominent, but Belgians also noted the play’s universality, citing parallels between varying dialects of Irish English and varying dialects in Belgium.⁵⁵⁶ From Brussels the production went to Bonn, opening the same week as the Northern Ireland peace talks. The only press report I’ve located focused on the play as a play, praising its ‘classical stringency’ and daring interjection of humour into events focused on the ‘deadening awareness of death’. There was no mention of contemporary events.⁵⁵⁷

In July 1998 the play again appeared in the context of Irish efforts to enhance cross-cultural understanding. Irish President Mary McAleese organized a reception for Orangemen from the Republic, a group whose presence had not before been generally noted or appreciated by the state. McAleese was reaching out to under-recognized communities and seeking to heighten awareness of the Republic’s diversity. A cross-community drum group from Derry, Northern Ireland, performed, and McGuinness read from Sons of Ulster.⁵⁵⁸

When McGuinness’s play finally arrived in the US (Williamstown Theatre, spring 2001), September 11 and the War in Iraq were still in the future. When director Nicholas Martin remounted that production in Boston (Wilbur Theatre, spring 2002), though, reviewers regularly mentioned its anti-war content and one drew analogies with Palestinians and refugee camps.⁵⁵⁹ By the time Martin brought the production to New York (Lincoln Center, February 2003) its relevance to US history seemed so compelling that one reviewer suggested the play be re-titled Observe the Sons and Daughters of America Marching Towards Iraq. Despite the programme’s extensive presentation of historical background, reviewers routinely focused on more general issues, describing the play as anti-war and noting its timely relation to ‘American drums of war’ and the ‘war obsessed environment’ of the United States. ‘Anyone urging the rush to war’, concluded Jeanne Lieberman, ‘should be compelled to see Frank McGuinness’s poignant, touching and intimate portrait of the effects of combat….’⁵⁶⁰ The emphasis on the play as ‘anti-war’ contrasts with frequent Northern Irish descriptions of it as a celebration of the noble sacrifice of Ulster soldiers. The play emphasizes both individual nobility and the collective futility of war, but reviewers in different times and places have been struck more forcefully by one element than the other. McGuinness himself pointed from the start to the anti-war themes, declaring in 1985 that ‘The Battle of the Somme is strongly a metaphor for the nature of multi-violence in the twentieth century. And I wanted to say that something as banal, but I hope as deep, as the human male and the human species of which he is part, is worth preserving, and that we’re now all standing on the verge of going over the top at the Somme….’⁵⁶¹ Now, almost twenty years later, the playwright again noted the play’s anti-war sentiment and its presentation of a ‘different type of Irishness’ than the Catholic nationalism familiar to US audiences.⁵⁶² Mentions of the ‘unfamiliar’ Irishness and of the actors’ difficult, often inconsistent accents were also common. Reviews in mainstream publications often mentioned gay issues, and a number of publications aimed at gay readers reviewed the play.⁵⁶³

The minimal familiarity of US reviewers with Irish (or, at least, Northern Irish) culture was evident when one saw in the soldiers’ raised red hands only a reference to the blood and violence of war, despite the programme’s explanation of the Red Hand of Ulster. McGuinness’s roots in the Catholic Irish Republic were ignored. A focus on cross-cultural understanding is notably missing. Only The Wild Geese Today, an Irish heritage internet site, noted the cross-cultural issues that are typically prominent in Irish reviews. Nor do any of the US reviews echo the French discussion of a ‘new’ Irish drama, coming from a more modern, more European, less post-colonial society. Clearly preoccupation with the progression toward a pre-emptive strike in Iraq shaped United States response to the play, but more than that seems to be involved. United States audiences were simply less interested in European developments and less familiar with Ireland’s deep cultural divisions. New York reviewers, in fact, often voiced puzzlement about the cultural and historical references, despite the help offered by the programme. Belfast celebrated the triumph of a Son of Ulster on Broadway.⁵⁶⁴

A second Lyric production coincided with the New York production. Like the Lyric’s 1990 production, it featured a lobby display of World War I memorabilia, this time from the Somme Heritage Centre collection. The programme included war photos, battlefield maps, and an essay by Philip Orr outlining the emblematic importance of the Battle of the Somme. Members of the Ulster Division at the Somme had largely come from ‘the old Ulster Volunteer Force, set up to oppose Irish Home Rule and to maintain Ulster’s place at the heart of the British Empire’. Fiercely loyal to Britain, suspicious that Britain did not really want them, suffering horrific casualties, these Ulster soldiers occupied a position parallel to that of contemporary Ulster loyalists. Understanding what the Somme represents, Orr argued, is ‘key to a true understanding of Northern Ireland’s place on these islands’.⁵⁶⁵

Pre-opening press reports focused less on Ulster history and more on connections between the play’s anti-war stance and the contemporaneous American/British movement toward war in Iraq. The cast and crew of the Lyric production were almost all from Ulster, and numerous regional papers (from Anderstown, Antrim, Lurgan, Portadown, Newry, and Armagh, for example) celebrated the appearance of favourite sons, in a play about their own province. Most of those pieces also connected the play to the looming war in Iraq, in language that is so similar (often identical) that it seems possible the papers were relying on a common source. Director Michael Duke also connected Sons of Ulster to the ‘relentless’ pursuit of war by Blair and Bush, concluding

If I was to write about producing this play at any other time, I’m sure I would be consumed by the artistic brilliance of the drama. For what it dares, and how it dares, the play is a must see at any time. But now, on the threshold of another major conflict, it is clear that how it deals with men and war transcends the men and the war in question, and gives us a unique perspective on our own dangerous present.⁵⁶⁶

Several reviews mention the presentation of gay love, sometimes in coded language: the men ‘question’ their sexuality or ‘illustrate their feelings’.⁵⁶⁷ Gay love was mentioned directly by Ian Hill, Karen Fricker, and Director Michael Duke, who neither lingered on nor avoided the play’s ‘hymn to the love which did not then dare to speak its name’.⁵⁶⁸

The remarkable coverage in local papers indicates the close connections felt between the play and Ulster, as well as the pride individual communities took in the success of local performers. Almost all of this press coverage also focused on history and Iraq. There was no significant mention of the play as a play. For reviewers, as for the director, contemporary realities trumped artistry as a primary concern.

Sons of Ulster has won a remarkable string of awards and has attracted talented professionals, particularly in Ireland and England, where productions have reached large audiences. It is now a text on the Advanced Subsidiary Exam set by the Northern Irish Council for the Curriculum. Among a wide variety of options on the exam are questions that focus on the portrayal of Protestant Ulster culture. The 2001 exam noted that ‘McGuinness suggests … that blood sacrifice plays a significant part in the culture of Protestant Ulster’ and suggested discussion of ‘distinctive features of Ulster Protestantism as presented in the play’ or ‘the importance of the characters’ Protestant culture to their bonding’. A 2002 exam pointed to the characters’ ‘involvement in a common cause’ and to the ‘relationship between past and present’ in the play, suggesting discussion of ‘shared values, traditions, attachments’ or the ‘place of the Somme in Protestant tradition’. In 2003 and 2004, when cultural tensions had eased and awareness of cultural diversity had increased, exam questions were phrased more generally and less prescriptively: the ‘hardening effects of war’ and the ‘importance of religious belief to characters’, for example.⁵⁶⁹

Sons of Ulster opened once more on the Abbey stage as part of the celebration of the Abbey’s first hundred years. Its selection as part of that celebration is another indication of the extent to which the play has become an icon in Irish theatre. The programme for abbeyonehundred describes the play as

magnificent and elegiac….A compelling portrait of a group of men divided by religion, politics and class but united in their common belief in God and country. McGuinness’ play at once celebrates their willingness to fight and die to preserve a way of life while offering a timely critique of the futility of war.⁵⁷⁰

I’m uncertain what to make of this description: if the production indeed reveals divisions of religion and politics among these soldiers (or even shows how to separate religion from politics in Northern Ireland) it will be a more nuanced interpretation than past productions have offered. Pyper (hardly an orthodox Protestant), Crawford (product of a mixed marriage), and Roulston (a failed minister) are divided in some ways from their unreflective Protestant companions. Not, however, divided enough to separate them from the general community of Ulster Protestants. But perhaps the abbeyonehundred programme merely means that these soldiers are divided from the Irish Republic, whose national theatre will again be placing them on stage – revealing once more the complexity of the play’s presentation of social and cultural issues, and the extent to which particular audiences have been able to find in it powerful messages about their times.

Extract From: ‘Echoes Down the Corridor’: Irish Theatre – Past, Present and Future, edited by Patrick Lonergan & Riana O’Dwyer (2007)

Cross Reference: Mason, Friel, Murphy, Barry, History, Memory.

See Also: The Theatre of Frank McGuinness: Stages of Mutability, edited by Helen Lojek