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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
52 April 2023 April 2023 53
Hornimn portrit in the Abbey: didn’t like politicl controversy
It needs to
aspire to
sustained artistic
excellence and
to take risks in
promoting pieces
that offer a
vision of radical
political progress
in Ireland.
T
he Abbey was opened in by
William Butler Yeats and Lady
Auusta Greory but in fact it was
owned and paid for by Yeats’ rich
Enlish friend, bluestockin Annie
Horniman, who didn’t want to have anythin
to do with Irish, or any other, politics,
especially incendiary nationalism. She also
did not care for the accessibility of theatre,
which was an important issue for the founders,
and indeed created additional rules for ticket
pricin, makin the Abbey Theatre one of the
most expensive theatres in Dublin, accordin
to Mary Trotter in ‘Ireland’s National Theaters’.
After the riots followin Syne’s ‘Playboy of
the Western World’ in , she fully
expressed her hatred for Irish nationalism and
patriotism and threatened to close the Abbey.
Yeats once described her as a “vularian”. She
was eased out in .
On the other hand the website history of
the Abbey states that “The founding of the
Theatre is connected with a broader wave of
change found in European drama at the end
of the nineteenth century. The founding of
Théâtre Libre in Paris in 1887 and the work of
the Moscow Art Theatre in 1895 represented a
challenge to a ‘stale metropolitanism’”. This
movement echoes Lady Gregory’s commitment
and determination to make the Abbey Theatre
a theatre for the people”.
So the Abbey Theatre itself ignores the
Horniman veto on political controversy. It is
not the only thing it denies.
More prosaically, In the ‘Cambridge
Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama’,
Adrian Frazier argues that “the Abbey Theatre’s
original purpose was to stage whatever
promoted the shallow Protestant-Ascendant
fantasy of Irish nationalism in which the
theatre’s founders (perhaps alone) believed”.
Fantasy nationalism: useless.
Unfortunately for Yeats’s grand vision of
the Abbey, though he was one of the English
language’s greatest poets, he was a schlocky
The Abbey Theatre’s
National Theatre problem
By Michael Smith and Rory O’Sullivan
Before she was eased out in 1910, Horniman
fully expressed her hatred for Irish
nationalism and patriotism and threatened
to close the Abbey
dramatist. ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’
cites his early, favourite, play, The Countess
Cathleen, but bitterly concludes: “Players and
painted stage took all my love, / And not those
things that they were emblems of”, pushing
him back to “the foul rag-and-bone shop of
the heart”.
As it is announced that the Abbey Theatre
is to get a new and extended home on its
site, this piece makes the case for greater
clarity of purpose and that, following on from
a bad start, the central stance of the Abbey
over three generations has been artistically
and politically unclear and unchallenging:
too often retrospective, and sometimes
romantically maudlin.
In 1925 the Abbey became the first state-
subsidised theatre in the English-speaking
world, and that finally largely insulated it from
CULTURE
52 April 2023 April 2023 53
Yets nd Gregory t Thoor Bllylee
private-sector-donor bias (though as of 2023 it
still seeks “corporate partners”), but this was
to create its own biases that have been no less
uncontroversial.
In 1926, during the first run of Sean O’Casey’s
The Plough and the Stars a riot broke out. Some
of the audience objected to his representation
of the 1916 Rising. Yeats took to the stage: “You
have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be
an ever recurring celebration of the arrival of
Irish genius?”. Nevertheless, concerned about
public reaction, the Abbey rejected O’Casey’s
next play. He emigrated to London shortly
afterwards.
According to Richard Fallis in ‘the Irish
Renaissance’, “The ‘theatre of beauty’ Yeats
had envisioned or even the theatre of dramatic
nationalism others had imagined gradually
turned into a commercial playhouse”. Yeats
later noted “Every country likes good art until
it produces its own form of vulgarity and after
that will have nothing else”. Commercialism
and vulgarity, forever.
Critic, author and one-time Civil-War
internee, Frank O’Connor’s memoir, ‘My
Father’s Son’, recounting his days as a young
writer in 1920s and 1930s Dublin – particularly
his friendship and work with Yeats – has a
remarkable third section titled, ‘The Abbey
Theatre’.
The piece has nothing much in the way
of history or ideas: instead (like everything
else Frank O’Connor wrote), it is just one
more occasion for a brilliant and devastating
scrutiny of someone else’s character. Here
the character is one of the Abbey Theatre’s
most powerful figures, Lennox Robinson,
who served as General Manager over the long
stretch from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The Abbey’s story begins with Augusta
Gregory and WB Yeats, but its truth is
encapsulated in the figure of Robinson who
had replaced the higher aspiring JM Synge who
had died in his thirties. Robinson was the one
who had to try and make something brilliant
from a failing theatre whose most incendiary
nights were history: from him everything was
expected, but nothing much of help was given.
In the 1920s Robinson tried to move beyond
the conventional Abbey ‘peasant’ play into
more middle-class, urban material. In ‘The
Big House’ (1926) he dealt with the theme
of the Anglo-Irish caught up in the wars that
ravaged his native county of Cork from 1919 to
1923, and returned to the plight of unionists
in southern Ireland in ‘Killycreggs in Twilight’
(1937). Regrettably, according to his entry in
the National Dictionary of Biography, “neither
of these plays was as popular as the lighter
comedies such as ‘The Whiteheaded Boy’,
‘The Far-O Hills’ (1918), and ‘Drama at Inish’
(1933)”.
Robinson was a mediocre playwright and
manager. In O’Connor’s telling he secretly
knew this and was tortured by it. He was just
good enough to despise his own shortcomings.
He wanted to be like his idol, Yeats. Robinson
was a sweet man and good with children, but
he often drank too much and became volatile.
His behaviour grew destructive towards the
Abbey and his fellow board members.
Tellingly and typically of much that has
been ocially forgotten, during the 1940s and
1950s, standard fare at Robinson’s Abbey was
gentle farce set in the idealised peasant world
of Éamon de Valera.
There was a steady decline in the number
of new productions. There were 104 new plays
produced from 1930 to 1940 but only 62 from
1940 to 1950.
Speaking in Peter Lennon’s magisterial 1967
documentary, ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’ Theatre
Producer, Jim Fitzgerald, summed up the then
National Theatre: “(T)he Abbey began as an
aristocratic theatre: it was run by WB Yeats
and lady Gregory. Now it developed towards
a proletarian theatre the best example by
Sean Casey, but the bourgeoisie rejected
O’Casey and this development of the theatre.
It then became what it is largely speaking
now, a theatre of the petty bourgeois. It has
no aesthetic but there is a movement and
there are several movements in the country
whose only possible aim is to take over
the Abbey because the national theatre
reflects conditions elsewhere but isn’t doing
so enough at the moment. The Abbey has
become enclosed and it’s not really reflecting
the great transitions which are taking place
in the country because the old guard in fact
remain in control. They’ve got to be removed”.
Bourgeois and without an aesthetic: what an
indictment.
Joe Dowling became artistic director in
1978 at just 28. He pioneered experimental
performances in the Peacock and promoted
Hugh Leonard, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy. His
legacy will be defined by the perceived merits
of this new Abbey establishment. In any event,
he was forced out by a conservative board in
1985. He has criticised the “constant pall of
“Players and painted stage took all my
love, / And not those things that they were
emblems of”, pushing Yeats’s return to “the
foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart”
54 April 2023 April 2023 55
people just constantly kicking the place”.
In September 2004, amid criticism of the
quality of his artistic programme for the
theatre’s centenary year, the Abbey’s then
Artistic Director, Ben Barnes, faced a “motion
of no confidence”. The Irish Times described
Barnes as presiding over an “over-ambitious
artistic agenda, which, while forced to bow
to conformist box oce demands, still never
manages to break even”.
On the other hand, speaking before his
motion was put, shareholder Ulick O’Connor,
always contrary, said that the theatre had
been run down “very badly”, mainly because
it had “got away from its roots”. Mr Barnes,
he said, “hasn’t done anything to help it”. It’s
unclear if the problem for beleaguered Barnes
was conformity or the opposite.
With the Abbey that’s never clear.
More than 30 writers were commissioned by
the Abbey after Fiach MacConghail, formerly
a tyro from the Project Arts Theatre, was
appointed director in May 2005. The Abbey
produced new plays by Tom Murphy, Richard
Dormer, Gary Duggan, Billy Roche, Bernard
Farrell and Owen McCaerty. It also developed
a relationship with the Public Theater in New
York
The Abbey also made a historic move in
2009-10 by producing four consecutive new
plays by women writers: Carmel Winter, Nancy
Harris, Stacey Gregg and Marina Carr.
However, when the Abbey ran a special
programme, Waking the Nation, to
commemorate the Easter Rising of 1916,
overwhelming controversy arose over the fact
that of ten productions, only one, a monologue
for children, was by a female playwright.
MacConghail retired after conceding that he
had not “checked his privilege”. It was an
ironic concession given that the relevance-
obsessed MacConghail fronted the most
politically progressive Abbey in history. It
also has led to a neglect ever since of artistic
excellence in the Abbey. Its leadership simply
risks too much if the politics are not deemed
acceptable.
In 2016, the Abbey’s direction passed to
two co-directors on five-year contracts. Neil
Murray, from Wales, and Graham McLaren,
from Scotland, who had not previously
controlled an actual theatre building.
In an interview in this magazine just
after their appointment, it was clear they
had no means of addressing the criticism
of Fiach MacConghail, who replaced duller
incumbents, that he had not reached the
highest international standards of excellence
expected, artistically. Perhaps this was
an unsurprising failing of the increasingly
political Abbey,
At the end of that 2017 interview, Village
explicitly sought their view on quality,
“asking the helpful Press Manager to kindly
ask either Neil or Graham for comments on
how they’re going to achieve ‘world-class’
standards and in particular address the
criticism of the (independent Abbey/Arts
Council) 2014 report that the Abbey wasn’t
then reaching ‘an acceptable standard for
professional theatre presentation’”. There
was a bit of a kerfue over whether the
quote (from the Irish Times) was accurate
and eventually the reply came through:
“This is not something Neil and Graham are
going to comment on because it was before
their time at the Abbey”.
Murray and McClaren pursued policies
involving: significant touring; a wider
selection of plays including shorter runs;
reduced reliance on Abbey stalwarts such as
‘The Plough and the Stars’; free previews; and
an emphasis on diversity. Their focus was
everything but the art of theatre.
There followed a rather mediocre Covid-and-
finances-tainted ascendancy. Their departure
led to a number of settlements, totalling about
€700,000 including legal fees, even though
their fixed five-year terms had run their course.
The pair also ran into moaning from actors,
designers and writers – 300 of whom signed
a critical public letter – that they were not
commissioning enough of them or paying
them well enough.
In the end Murray and McLaren achieved
nothing and left MacConghail looking like the
closest thing to a visionary the theatre has
found in a generation.
The Abbey’s tragedies are its descent from
Yeats and succumbing to a banal interpretation
of the National Theatre thing. It needs to aspire
to sustained artistic excellence and to take
risks in promoting pieces that oer a vision of
radical political progress in Ireland.
National Theatres are not common
worldwide, and it is far from obvious what
they are supposed to be. London has the
National Theatre, which is more dynamic than
the Abbey, being less constrained by a need
to be canonical or showy: London also has
the Globe for Shakespeare and the West end
for lower-middle-brow Andrew Lloyd-Weber
anyway so its canon is safe. In Paris on the
other hand the closest thing to a National
Theatre, the Comédie-Française, is so old-
fashioned and traditional it is like a theatrical
equivalent of Versailles. When Cate Blanchett
ran Australia’s, when the board members
asked them what their aims were, she claims
“we told them that, at the end of the day, we
want people to get in a cab and say, ‘We’re
going to the Sydney Theatre Company,’ and for
the cab driver to know where the fuck it is”.
That’s not enough, in Ireland with its
tradition.
The Burgtheater in Vienna (which was
established in 1741 and crescendoed in
particular during the 1960s and 1970s) and the
National Theatre in Prague (in the 1990s and
admittedly more in their opera productions)
show that it is possible for such cultural
institutions to revitalise, and their examples
In the end McLaren and
McLaren achieved nothing
and left MacConghail
looking like the closest thing
to a visionary the theatre
has found in a generation
Mrk O’Brien nd Citrion McLughlin, co-directing the Abbey now
54 April 2023 April 2023 55
oer a blueprint for how to marry artistic and
social agendas.
The Abbey sits somewhere between these
extremes, sharing striking similarities with the
National Theatre of Norway which tediously
repeats endless Ibsen runs (the Abbey has run
fully 57 productions of ‘The Plough and the
Stars’ down the transmogriphied years).
One advantage of the National Theatre label
is its suggestion that, at least in theory, the
Abbey’s audience should include everybody,
which has helped to make it less stifling than
the crusty Gate Theatre.
Since the middle of last year there has
been a new regime in place under Caitriona
McLaughlin and Mark O’Brien, as Artistic and
Executive Directors respectively, continuing
the new tradition of quite anonymous
leadership with no clear vision, less still one
that robustly addresses recent – recurring –
mistakes.
Here is the nub of the theatre’s current
mission statement: “(O)ur mission is to
eectively and imaginatively engage with
all of Irish society through the production
of ambitious, courageous theatre in all its
forms”.
It goes on: “The Abbey Theatre is artist-led
and audience-focused: we seek to ensure
our programmes are driven by ambitious, big
ideas by theatre-makers of all disciplines,
relevant to our times and reflective of our role
as a national theatre”.
It is a kitchen-sink mission for a theatre
and of little use because it amounts to an
obligation to project onstage an image of
the nation, all of it. It gives no guidance on
orientation or ideology, so this becomes a
pressure towards the stultifying and mediocre.
The ideology of entity.
That idea reflects the early twentieth century
paternalistic pre-conception that people in
cultural and political positions of authority
believed they were entitled to choose what
contested terms like “Ireland” meant for
everyone else. Éamon De Valera was supposed
— in a similar spirit — to have said that if he
ever wished to know what the Irish want, he
simply looked into his heart.
But McLaughlin and O’Brien, Murray and
McLaren are not Yeats or De Valera.
Commenting on her appointment last year,
McLaughlin who had been an Associate
Director at the Abbey since 2017, said:
“Our stories teach us what it is to belong,
and what it is to be excluded and exclude. My
journey as Artistic Director begins with these
twin impulses, and with two questions: who
were we, and who are we now?”.
Speaking to Hot Press last year she noted
unpersuasively: “The starting place for me
is always the here and now. What’s going on
with me personally? What’s going on with the
organisation? What’s going on with society in
general? The phrase that kept coming back to
me, was that I wanted to look at who we are,
who we were and who we want to be. Those
were the ideals. The other things that were
important were that I would engage with new
writers and artists. But also that it would be
built on the foundations of the canon and the
historical work that was here”.
Something for everyone then, with a
guiding nod to the past, and artists. Fianna
Fáil on Abbey Street – alive to what’s going
on. It is significant that who we are, were and
will be are described as “ideals” rather than
phenomena.
If, previously, the National Theatre’s job was
to stage the nation, its spirit or essence, now
it aims to engage with all the nation, the heap
of individuals. With all and with none. The
National Theatre has become an empty vessel.
It is intended simply to hold whatever “all of
Irish society” pours into it or at least whatever
it pours in during “engagement”.
This might seem a pleasingly democratic
version of a National Theatre: one committed
to staging shows as diverse as possible in
order to match the variety of the concerns and
ways of life of people in Ireland.
Compared with the old concept of a
National Theatre, this new one certainly
has the significant advantage of excluding
marginalised people less.
Yes the Abbey’s current oering strives to be
representative. On its worst nights the Abbey
simply regurgitates what its audience have
been consuming for weeks on their phones –
songs, hashtags, news stories.
Substantively there is insucient interest in
quality, in excellence.
Like Robinson, the theatre is tragically let
down by its own guiding
philosophy: a new one
certainly, but, no more
appropriate and a highly
forgetable one.
On its best nights the
Abbey does indeed puts
on brilliant plays and
sometimes addresses its
agenda, even its latest
agenda, head-on. ‘An
Octoroon’ recently for
example. Abbey Executive
Director Mark O’Brien
commented of the play:
“we are exploring what that
word ‘diversity’ actually
means. By using that word,
are we defining what’s
normal? Who gets to define
normality? All these tropes
that are in the world at
the moment, particularly
The Abbey’s current mission is to “effectively
and imaginatively engage with all of Irish
society through the production of ambitious,
courageous theatre in all its forms“
in Irish society, need to be examined a bit
more. Having this work on our stage forces us,
in a very good way, to re-examine ourselves”.
Ironically it was the two minority white actors
who received nominations recently for the Irish
Times Theatre Awards. Defining normality: not
so bad.
What ‘An Octoroon’ did well in adapting an
overtly racist work was to show how racism is
part of the way the traditional institutions of
the theatre have formed us. In the reaction
the play sought, it aimed beyond diversity to
liberation.
Yet from a programmatic point of view it
was very simple. The crew chose a work of
theatrical genius and performed it excellently. In
thematic terms the achievement of the play ‘An
Octoroon’ is to demonstrate how deep history
and oppression go – they are the very stu
that makes us who we are, members of society
- as well as a part of us they have concealed
but not destroyed. That it did not receive more
nominations in recent theatre awards is a
travesty. But the Abbey should not commission
plays simply to win awards.
An Abbey worthy of these times will be
one that shows audiences the present-day
institutions of the nation in light of the real
possibilities outside those institutions and
beyond that nation. It can’t do these issues
justice while it is a national institution remote
from ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart’.
Beyond that, while taking risks, it needs to
focus: not on the whole of society or even on the
elusive concept of society but on artistic quality
and on a progressive national politics.
An Octoroon, the Abbey, 2022
