Irish Drama

This fall, Princeton University will be holding special events celebrating Irish drama. In addition to an exhibition of manuscripts and other documents at Princeton's Firestone Library, there will be symposiums hosting Irish actors such as Stephen Rea and Fiona Shaw, a student performance of Synge's Playboy of the Western World, and a performance at the McCarter Theater of Brian Friel's Translations.

This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I were still a student, or that I had had the gumption and discipline to become an academic. Instead of sitting in a cubicle, performing work that ultimately means nothing to me other than a paycheck, I like to imagine that I could be some kind of scholar, sitting around discussing Yeats.

I already have my ticket to Translations, and I will certainly try to see Playboy of the Western World, which I first read as an undergraduate. The "Western World" does not mean Western civilization, but rather the West of Ireland, which is a fertile ground for literature. A contemporary playwright, Martin McDonagh (pictured) has also used the Connemara and Aran Islands as settings for his plays. I have a collection of three of his plays, and read the first one last night, and was blown away. The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which ran on Broadway a few years ago, is the deceptively simple story of a 40 year old daughter who slaves to take care of her dotty and manipulative mother. Their relationship is based on pure hatred, and it's somewhat startling in this day and age of Dr. Phil to read a woman saying she would be glad to see her mother murdered with an ax. When the daughter, who is a spinster, gets a chance at romance and the mother interferes, it has the kind of crushing dramatic effect that makes play-reading (and going) worthwhile.