Review: The Silver Tassie
The Town Hall Theatre, Galway
'THE Silver Tassie', renowned since its rejection by the Abbey in the 1920s as a "difficult" work, emerges in Garry Hynes's fine new production as one of the great (anti-) war plays.
In the apparent absurdity and sense of dislocation of its notorious second act, set at the front, and in its juxtaposition of a music-hall style with a pervading sense of dread, it anticipates another great post-war play, 'Waiting for Godot'.
In the relentlessly unsentimental tone in which it explores the impact of the war on a tight group of family and friends, it anticipates the great Vietnam film, 'The Deer Hunter'.
In its jagged structure and jarring transitions, it also anticipates the 1990s playwright of postmodern violence, Sarah Kane.
The questions (and doubts) raised by those "difficult" transitions are resolved in the final act, set at a post-war party in a Dublin football club. (Warning -- plot disclosure follows.) Football hero Harry Heegan is now confined to a wheelchair, reduced to trailing after his former girlfriend as she courts his one-time best friend, who also saved his life at the Front.
O'Casey's moral is clear: the destruction of war lays bare the hollowness of humanity and the futility of faith. Regularly, sentiment tries to break through this cynicism -- in the lilt of a negro spiritual, or a plaintive turn of phrase. Consistently, O'Casey and Hynes extinguish it, letting the music hall swallow the maudlin.
Aaron Monaghan as Harry is superb, as is Eamon Morrissey as his father. The cast is generally strong. Elliot Davis's new music to O'Casey's lyrics is stirring. Francis O'Connor's sets (which change radically from act to act) are strikingly effective, though for the second act this is overbearing.
The sole significant problem lies with Hynes's ambition in the second act, where a crowded stage and sound design conspire against the clarity of O'Casey's writing.
- Colin Murphy
Irish Independent
