Sean O'Casey: A Life

by O'Connor, Garry

  *

  On 10 August Shaw’s Man and Superman opened at the Abbey. For O’Casey the play was the equivalent, possibly, of brother Mick’s indulgence in drink: it gave him psychic and emotional relief, an escape, from the huge effort he had put into The Plough and the Stars. Shaw’s verbal assault intoxicated him. Drink and quarrelling alike assuage the sexual urge; as Captain White, given to epigrams, observed, “in the words of the Gaelic proverb, fighting is better than loneliness”.

  O’Casey went backstage after the Shaw play. F. J. was acting Tanner, in a performance O’Casey hated, and the director was Michael Dolan. O’Casey, wielding a sword for Bernard Shaw, at once launched an onslaught on the company, an attack he later defended with mock innocence and hardly convincing bewilderment: he said it was a patchy production which had little merit or consistency and deserved general ridicule. Shocked, the actors tried to hush him up, while F. J. (in O’Casey’s version) warned, “‘I hear you’ve been criticising our rendering of Shaw’s play. You’ve got a bit of a name now, and you must not say these things about an Abbey production. If you do, we’ll have to report it to the Directors.’”[338]

  Not content to leave it at that — and rubbing salt into the effect of the bad notices next day — O’Casey wrote to Dolan that his first impressions were “confirmed and intensified” upon reflection, and restated them, directing a strong personal attack at Dolan over his loyalty to F. J.’s performance. “Extravagant vehemence … marred the whole pattern of the play, and the thing that astonishes me is that you seem to fail to see it.” He went on to exempt from his indictment his favourite in the company, Barry Fitzgerald, playing Roebuck Ramsden, who “admits he was bad”, and Ria Mooney (Violet Robinson). But Ann (played by Eileen Crowe, later F. J.’s wife) was “the weakest manifestation of the surging life force one could imagine”.

  O’Casey’s old demons — the Deverell brothers of Leedon’s, the foreman Reid and the engineers on the GNR, the bosses and bourgeois nationalists such as Bulmer Hobson, or his brother Mick — had assumed a new and unlikely form: that of a pathetically touching and gifted family of actors. As he had done with every other organisation with which he became involved, he now split up the Abbey into phantom goodies and baddies, pinning his own dark inner hostilities on to good and well-meaning people.

  There was also something of the holy fool about the way O’Casey voiced the self-defeating vanity of his opinions:

  I have written this primarily to show that no savage attack upon me by you or by Mr F. J. McCormack [sic] will prevent me from venturing to give an answer for the hope that is in me, and to point out that while the Abbey Players have often turned water into wine, they may occasionally, (as in this instance, in my opinion) turn wine back again into water …[339]

  — especially as he then, with these words, handed over the first typed copy of The Plough and the Stars to the Abbey for its consideration. Perhaps he was also saying, “I dare you not to perform it …”

  Dolan, a hard uncompromising man, cast in the role of O’Casey’s scourge, responded by pinning his wine-and-water letter up on the theatre notice board. A few nights later Seághan Barlow, the stage carpenter and painter, stopped O’Casey on his way to the Green Room:[340]

  BARLOW: May I ask what you’re doin’ on th’ stage?

  SEAN: I’m on my way to the Green Room.

  BARLOW: There’s none but the actors and officials allowed on the stage, and we’d be glad if you came this way no more.

  Success must have been a terrible strain. It brought no comfort, only more exposure, while failure had always its own compensations for one of the unlucky Caseys.

  10 — Divine Afflatus

  But O’Casey had written his masterpiece, so — for perhaps the only time in his life — his cantankerousness was borne, while the inflamed feelings of those he had attacked were waved aside but not forgotten. McCormick seemed to be a saint of another kind, however, one who bore no grudge at all. Riding high, O’Casey set out for Coole on 19 August 1925 for a fortnight’s holiday, with its agreeable prospect of meeting Jack Yeats, W. B.’s painter brother, and his wife, Mary, who were also guests.

  The night he arrived, Lady Gregory received the copy of his The Plough and the Stars from Lennox Robinson, who had previously sent it to Yeats. Both men had found it “probably the best thing O’Casey has done”. Lady Gregory read the play aloud to her house guests — the first act on Sunday, the other three on Monday evening. Her opinion bore out those of Robinson and Yeats. “It was rather embarrassing to me,” O’Casey wrote to Fallon, “to hear her reading the saucy song sung by Rosie & Fluther in the second act, but she is an extraordinarily broadminded woman & objects only to the line ‘put your leg over mine, Nora’; not because it is objectionable, but because she’s afraid it may provoke a laugh from the wrong people.”[341] The play was then sent off to George O’Brien, Professor of Economics at University College, who had been appointed government watchdog of the theatre that summer when the Abbey received its first annual subsidy from the Free State.

  O’Casey had designed his new play like a projectile aimed at stirring up the wasps’ nest of the new Ireland. He had worried over what friends and supporters of the Easter Rising might think, but not Abbey Theatre employees. M. J. Dolan, slow to forgive O’Casey after their row, made the first sabotage attempt, writing to Lady Gregory on 2 September, “I would think twice before having anything to do with it. The language in it is — to use an Abbey phrase — beyond the beyonds. The song at the end of the second act, sung by the ‘girl-in-the-streets’, is unpardonable.”[342]

  Dolan successfully lobbied George O’Brien, who had now read the script. He declared that the introduction in Act II of Rosie Redmond, one of O’Casey’s master strokes, was quite unnecessary to the action. Prostitutes per se, O’Brien thought, were not in themselves objectionable, but “The lady’s professional side is unduly emphasised in her actions and conversation and I think that the greater part of this scene should be re-written.” He also found fault with O’Casey’s numerous profanities and “vituperative vocabulary” — words such as “bitch”, “lowsers” and “lice” — and with the Clitheroes’ Act I love scene, which did not “read true”. He thought, with Lady Gregory, that Jack’s “put your leg over mine” should be cut, and in addition, “Little rogue of th’ white breast”.

  Fortunately — for he would probably have publicised them — O’Casey did not know of these comments; Yeats and Robinson tactfully disposed of O’Brien, agreeing about Clitheroe in Act I, but putting the economist, now self-appointed censor, firmly in his place:

  O’Casey is contrasting the ideal dream with the normal grossness of life and of that she [the prostitute] is an essential part. It is no use putting her in if she does not express herself vividly and in character, if her “professional” side is not emphasised. Almost certainly a phrase here and there must be altered in rehearsal but the scene as a whole is admirable, one of the finest O’Casey has written. To eliminate any part of it on grounds that have nothing to do with dramatic literature would be to deny all our traditions.

  O’Brien, prophetically as it turned out, stuck to his point, replying to Yeats and Robinson on 13 September: “I feel however that there are certain other considerations affecting the production to which it is, in a peculiar way, my duty to have regard. One of these is the possibility that the play might offend any section of public opinion so seriously as to provoke an attack on the theatre [my italics] of a kind that would endanger the continuance of the subsidy. Rightly or wrongly, I look upon myself as the watchdog of the subsidy. Now, I think that the play, just as it stands, might easily provoke such an attack …”[343]

  *

  Returning to Dublin, O’Casey found he had developed a taste for the countryside, especially the cock that sat on his windowsill every morning: “They are mending the road just outside my window, & a lumbering road-engine, with its monstrous, monotonous rumble has taken the place of the cock. He had a rar
e three-course meal the last day I was with him — bread & butter, barmbrack and ginger-cake.” Yeats had rung O’Casey at the Abbey and invited him round to Merrion Square to discuss alterations to the text of The Plough and the Stars — Yeats felt in particular that the first act love scene needed altering. The full force of Yeats’s approval turned on O’Casey warmed him so much that he exclaimed excitedly to Lady Gregory, “Speaking to me across the telephone, Mr Yeats said he thought The Plough & the Stars a wonderful play, and I am very pleased to rank with you, and Yeats, Robinson & Synge in the great glory of the Abbey Theatre.” He babbled on to Lady Gregory like an excited schoolboy, enclosed cuttings about the Abbey, and revealed that he was now the hero of his former hero’s followers:

  Jim Larkin had a great meeting here on Wednesday night. His men were jubilant, for five boats laden with coal, purchased by the Union, had berthed in the Liffey, and some food ships are expected too.

  He spoke again of “the little Theatre, over the river”, at the meeting, and I know that many coal-heavers, dockers, Carters & labourers have been in the Abbey, & good is sure to come from their visits. Many grumbling to me because they couldn’t get in wanted to know “why the hell we didn’t take the Tivoli [a music hall theatre]!”[344]

  Calling on Yeats in his Merrion Square study, O’Casey was almost overcome, first, by the “onslaught of venomous warmth”, and, second, by the ear-splitting scream of fifty canaries in a gold-barred cage — “Dose derrible birds,” Lady Gregory called them, in O’Casey’s mocking rendering of her slight speech impediment. He found the great man ready to address him.

  “O’Casey,” Yeats boomed, “you have written a great play; this play is the finest thing you have done. In an Irish way, you have depicted the brutality, the tenderness, the kindling humanity of the Russian writer, Dostoevsky.”[345] At Coole, prodding the logs with a brass poker, Lady Gregory had smilingly and ingenuously told O’Casey how shocked she had been to find Yeats had read nothing by Dostoevsky; she had immediately lent him two of the novels. So now, when Yeats announced “O’Casey, you are the Irish Dostoevsky!” O’Casey’s comment was, “And Yeats only after reading the man’s book for the first time the night before.”

  Back at the more modest North Circular Road O’Casey sat down to alter his love scene, and to read The Idiot himself with “reverent avidity”, commenting to its generous lender Lady Gregory in words that she must have wanted to hear from her all too often defiantly atheistic protégé, “It is a great story … The central figure is a Christ that was born in Russia. Not Revolutions, but men must bring about the Brotherhood of Man.”[346]

  *

  The Plough and the Stars had other faults, although they were not in any way obstacles to production; rather, they were flaws endemic in O’Casey’s nature, which his judgment could or should have modified rather than developed with time. Minnie in Gunman was not an altogether successful character, and the same might be said of Mary Boyle: Nora Clitheroe, a much more important and central character than the other two, also fails to be wholly convincing. Respectable, straightforward heroines are not susceptible to the accretions of character or presence that O’Casey is so adept at applying: Rosie Redmond, the more dangerous and provocative female, stirred his imagination at a deeper level. Here, perhaps, is the answer to why he did not marry Maire: it was not, ultimately, as he presented it, that she thought she was too good for him, but that her virtue and goodness palled on him.

  Other faults in The Plough and the Stars were potentially more serious. The Abbey guardians had curbed his proselytising tendency, made him concern himself wholly with character and with reproducing the processes of Dublin life. But in the character of the Covey and especially in the verbal duels he has with Fluther and Peter, O’Casey was beginning to revert to his old practice, before the acceptance of his first play, of using his characters as spokesmen for ideological points of view.

  THE COVEY (loudly): There’s no use o’ arguin’ with you; it’s education you want, comrade.

  FLUTHER: The Covey an’ God made the world, I suppose, wha’?

  THE COVEY: When I hear some men talkin’ I’m inclined to disbelieve that th’ world’s eight-hundhred million years old, for it’s not long since th’ fathers o’ some o’ them crawled out o’ th’ sheltherin’ slime o’ the sea.[347]

  These exchanges reveal the start of the considerable negative influence Shaw had on O’Casey, which increased when the two men later became friends. All Shaw’s debaters have brilliant minds, but O’Casey’s verbal brawlers are not in the same league; they scatter shrapnel instead of forging sharp points.

  Also, in The Plough and the Stars, O’Casey began to display an ominous if still only slight capacity for self-parody, a long-windedness which shows with what care the dividing line needs to be drawn between self-mockery and pomposity:

  FLUTHER (scornfully): Then Fluther has a vice versa opinion of them that put ivy leaves into their prayer-books, scabbin’ it on th’ clergy, an’ thryin’ to out-do th’ haloes o’ th’ saints be lookin’ as if he was wearin’ around his head a glittherin’ aroree boree allis!

  or

  PETER: … isn’t it a poor thing for a man who wouldn’t say a word against his greatest enemy to have to listen to that Covey’s twartin’ animosities, shovin’ poor, patient people into a lashin’ out of curses that darken his soul with th’ shadow of th’ wrath of th’ last day![348]

  The stage directions, too, tend to become overdetailed and elaborate. Significantly, the Act I setting of the Clitheroes’ flat — used for only a quarter of the play — is described at twice the length of the Boyles’ living room in Juno, from which the action never moves.

  O’Casey was determined that Lennox Robinson should direct The Plough and the Stars, and his wish was granted. The casting proved fraught with difficulties. Fallon charged Robinson with choosing players to weaken the production, for the reason that he was now jealous of O’Casey’s reputation, but this seems unlikely. Robinson, not very strong himself and increasingly given to drink, assembled a cast every bit as strong as Dolan had for Juno. O’Casey had his way with Fluther (Barry Fitzgerald), while F. J., the Jack Tanner he had despised, seemed no bad choice for Clitheroe. The part of Nora was given to a relative newcomer, Shelah Richards, but she went on to establish herself as an Abbey stalwart. O’Casey chose for “The Voice” (of Pearse) John Stephenson, while the tough and dour M. J. Dolan agreed to be the Covey: an ironic choice in view of his and O’Casey’s feud, for the Covey is the most autobiographical, as well as the most spiteful, character in the play. Eileen Crowe, who was to marry F. J. at the end of 1925, was cast first as Rosie, but — perhaps with her own marriage in mind, and a sense of shyness at being cast in a role so opposite — shied away from the part, and elected to do Mrs Gogan. Ria Mooney, hotly championed by O’Casey in Man and Superman, replaced her as Rosie.

  The greatest setback to the casting spelled good fortune in another guise. Sara Allgood, triumphant as Juno, had been the natural choice for Bessie Burgess, and the part had been written for her. But she had been released from the Abbey for the first London production of Juno, directed by J. B. Fagan at the Royalty Theatre. O’Casey considered their second choice, Maureen Delaney, “too merry” even for Mrs Gogan, for whom May Craig was originally suggested. (O’Casey had dismissed her as “impossible”.) In the event Maureen Delaney was chosen. O’Casey also felt Fallon ought to play Peter Flynn, persuading his friend, against his better judgment, to take the role.

  Juno opened in London in mid-November. O’Casey at one stage considered attending — it would have been his first journey outside Ireland. But he elected to remain quietly in Dublin, resting his eyes and chatting to Joe Cummins, enjoying the painting, “The Tops of the Mountains”, he had just purchased from Jack Yeats, and helping to breathe life into his new play, instead of going with Juno “to live among the shades”, as he told Lady Gregory. But whether he knew it or not, those shades were soon to assume an enticing shape, r
eady to rescue him from his “apotheosis” of the following year.

  The London critics were highly enthusiastic about Juno, especially James Agate, who called it “as much a tragedy as Macbeth, but a tragedy taking place in the porter’s family”.[349] But O’Casey took a lofty view of the whole matter, exhorting his leading lady not to get a swelled head:

  A dramatic success is as big a nuisance as a dramatic failure. I have been flooded with letters, till I feel, like Job, I could curse God & die!

  All the same, Sally, I’m delighted “Juno” is going so well, & sincerely hope she may have a long and useful life.

  I hope you are pleased with the grand notices you are getting; while they make your heart flutter, I hope they won’t fill your head with contempt for your poorer brothers and sisters.

  The best way is to take them quietly & murmur — Well, what the hell else could they say. I cannot offer you congratulations, for you have done nothing that I did not know was in you to do.[350]

  Could the stern moral warning he issued really be for Sara? More likely for himself.

  *

  When The Plough and the Stars went into rehearsal, in early January of 1926, there was already a pro-O’Casey and an anti-O’Casey faction in the cast, and while rumours of the inflammatory content of the play spread, these divisions also took hold of the public. “Dublin was too close to everyone.” Fallon, on O’Casey’s side, claimed that Robinson “consciously or unconsciously … was out to damage O’Casey’s play”,[351] but Robinson gave O’Casey a very different impression, for he wrote to Sara Allgood in London with hopes that while she was missing the Dublin première, she might one day play Bessie Burgess: “I see where Robbie [L. R.] read the last act of the play at a lecture he gave in the Liverpool University. He thinks the last act splendid, & Bessie has a fine part in it. I’m looking forward to seeing you enthrall audiences in the interpretation.”[352]