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Oxfordprospect |
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- 22 September 2010
The SILVER TASSIE,
"a play by Seán O’Casey, at the Oxford Playhouse."
By: Julia Gasper. The visits to Oxford of the Druid theatre company are something anticipated with excitement by Playhouse fans. This time they have taken on the considerable challenge of Sean O’Casey’s 1929 play The Silver Tassie, set in the First World War. It is a strange play, lengthy, involved and wide-ranging, with a first act in naturalistic style and others in what can perhaps be called expressionistic mode, as the play struggles to present on stage the full hellishness of the battlefield and the lunacy of the war experience. The impact this has is considerable, and bearing in mind that this country in 2010 has been at war now for nearly nine years, I think that this play, sombre though it is, deserves to be seen. In fact, every young man who is thinking of joining the army and going off to Afghanistan, ought to go and see it. The “silver tassie” of the title is a cup, awarded as a sporting trophy. Harry Heegan (Aaron Monaghan), a young Irishman who is a football hero in his home town near Dublin, goes off to the trenches, bidding his mother and sweetheart goodbye. When he comes back crippled, he realizes that it is not only football he is going to miss out on in the future. His sweetheart finds a luckier man and Harry makes no attempt to hide his bitterness and jealousy. He refuses to “be brave”, to suffer in dignity, or “look on the bright side”, if there is a bright side of life in a wheelchair for a young sportsman. Instead, he forces everyone to confront his rage, resentment and anguish. It appears from the play that the First World War did have a bright side for some people - and not only those with shares in tank factories. For Susie Monican (Clare Dunne), a young woman in her twenties, life before the war offers little prospect except low wages and the escape of religious obsession. Her preaching and exhortation irritate the Heegan household, but when the war comes along she gets trained as a nurse, which raises her status and pay, and puts her in the path of an eligible young doctor. The downtrodden Mrs Foran doesn’t do too badly either; when her bullying brute of a husband comes back from the trenches blind, it’s a great improvement from her point of view. He will be considerably less trouble to her in future! This is an angry play, and a work of substance. It might have done with some trimming down here and there, however its themes are contemporary, and its message is still important. The Silver Tassie is on at the Playhouse until Saturday 25th September. http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ |
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