Warning: lots of spoilers! Don’t read this blogpost if you’re planning on watching the play/s any time soon.
My mind is still whirling after seeing Marina Carr’s ’two-play theatrical event’ The Boy a few days ago. ‘Event’ seems the correct term for it. The Abbey theatre may be a far more restrained setting than the boisterous Great Dionysia, the religious-political festival at which the plays on which Carr ‘riffs’ (as she calls it), were staged in fifth-century BCE Athens. Yet the ways in which the plays implicate the audience (see below), as well as breaks during and in between the plays create a definite sense of audience community; even though I went on my own, I had lovely chats with others about their experience of the plays and the day they’d made of it. It was an intense and challenging afternoon and evening of theatre but I loved getting swept up in Carr and director Caitríona McLaughlin’s world-building, and came away both deeply moved and confused.
Carr herself states very clearly that this is not a traditional rendering of Sophocles’ three plays about Oedipus’ family (Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus in Colonus, and Antigone), and that was made clear the moment the play started and the audience was, without warning, blasted with a huge white light from the back of the stage, temporarily blinding us (see image below). I loved the stage design in general, but this one lighting choice said so much. Of course it refers to Oedipus being blinded while implicating us all by shining a light on us as audience: we’re all Oedipus, we’re all human (‘clodhoppers’, as the gods call humans in the play – clumsy and slow as we are), we’re all capable of making mistakes with far-reaching consequences. But to me the light also felt like a sort of ‘eye of god’ burning through our façade and revealing everything we humans try to cover up – I thought that was my overly active imagination until I started seeing the gods in action throughout the play, but more about them below.
Clodhoppers
At a human level both plays are about three generations in Oedipus’ family ‘who discover horrendous things about themselves‘ and, each in their own way, try to deal with the consequences of their arrogance and error. In that way they connect not only with the way in which particularly the Greek playwright Aeschylus dealt with family patterns, but also with a current trend in TV series (think of House of Guinness and Kin) – there was something episodic about the plays, which moved from one drama and protagonist to another within the one family.
It was refreshing that Carr put not only Oedipus but also his father Laius at the centre of the drama, which opened up the plays beyond Sophocles‘ imagination. In myth, Laius caused the curse on his family by raping the son of a family friend, a boy called Chrysippus. Oedipus and Chrysippus: two boys whose lives are shaped by the tyrannical nature of one king – the ambiguous title The Boy (singular!) perhaps hinting at the fact that as stories focus on one trauma, they may forget or deliberately erase others. Perhaps not necessarily refreshing but definitely cringe and fascinating was the fact that Chrysippus throughout the plays insisted he loved Laius and Laius loved him. I didn’t quite know what to make of that. In the second play, The God and his daughter, Jocasta at one point states that pederasty was the done thing in antiquity, which seems to shrug off the problem. But, in the plays, the gods punish Laius precisely because of this, which seems to contradict the nonchalance with which Jocasta refers to paedophilia – that humans have no idea when they’re transgressing sacred norms is one of the overarching themes throughout the event.
Equally cringe and horrific/refreshing was the fact that Oedipus and Jocasta (see the image below, of Frank Blake as sexy Oedipus and Eileen Walsh as powerful Jocasta) were still attracted to each after they declared that they kind of always knew they were each other’s mother and son. The steamy sex scene really challenges us to think about human behaviours, especially among those in power.
Carr’s first stage direction is Time: Always. which emphasizes the universal questions about human life which the plays ask. One of those questions is about power and accountability of authority figures. The audience becomes both Theban citizenry and modern spectators at a political rally when Oedipus and Jocasta come to stand in front of the audience and address us directly as king and queen about their power and accountability to citizens. Yet a second question relates to family trauma, as every family tries to deal with but also hides, justifies, or ignores stories of shame and guilt. The two questions connect in the issue of abuse of power and the merging of the personal and the political we find among the powerful and wealthy.
Yet as universal as these questions are that are asked by the plays, the event is also – even to a non-Irish person like me with only a basic knowledge of Irish theatre and modern history – very Irish. Chrysippus comes to stand in front of the audience with long red hair flowing down his back, singing a repetitive song that is at once ancient hymn and connecting with Irish culture.
When Oedipus is exposed on Mt Cithaeron at birth, a nauseating scene emerges from the ceiling: children’s corpses hanging down, at various levels of decomposition. Nothing explicit is said about the centuries-old Irish trauma of women who got pregnant outside of marriage having their children taken from them by catholic institutions. Yet as Oedipus was hung up on the tree, a number of girls with babies walked on stage just in front of the audience, and had their children taken from them by veiled women.
Laius gets killed by Oedipus because the latter refuses to join him in drinking, hinting at the effects of alcohol abuse which destroy families. Laius literally pushes a bottle down Oedipus’ throat. And when Oedipus’ son Eteocles is buried, the procession singing a funeral hymn again bridges the chasm between ancient Greek burial culture and the aftermath of the Irish civil war. All of these moments worked beautifully and connected not only ancient and modern, and political and familial – but also the grand and epic scale of the production with the intimate relationships and questions that were explored.
The actors’ emphatic Irish lilt – it really is a stellar cast – exemplifies Carr’s ‘riff’ on classical tragedy. The different Irish accents jarred in my mind with the ancient names and stories, but as such also kept me on my toes as an audience member. For the action refused to be set either in ancient Greece or modern Ireland, hence blurring boundaries just like Oedipus’ family. (Part of me wishes Carr had gone full-out By the Bog of Cats in which she set Euripides’ Medea in rural Ireland and there are no ancient names or direct references – but I understand and appreciate her choice, and the jarring of ancient and modern was very much thought-provoking.)
The Shower
But human family trauma and abuse of power is just half of the story. Throughout the two plays, part of Oedipus’ and Jocasta’s tragedy is that they refuse to believe in oracles and the gods (called ’the shower’ – perhaps because referring to Zeus’ nebulous nature? I couldn’t help but completing the Irish phrase ‘shower… of bastards‘). Oedipus’ first programmatic statement is in fact: ‘There’s only us, and the stories we can spin. Believing in God is like believing in money. Fiction. All fiction.’ Oedipus at one point even says: ‘We are the new gods!’. Yet the Shee (see below) corrects him: ‘Suppose I was to say to you there’s more… More God. More mystery, more everything, that the world is vaster, stranger than you imagine’. What a statement. As the plays develop, it becomes clear to the characters that our lives are steeped in mystery, and by thinking it’s just us we lose sight of the greater story in which we take part.
The smallness of humans is emphasized throughout the two plays by the presence of an oppressively large rectangle floating from the ceiling, in which we see the actions of the human actors reflected as if from above, as if from the perspective of the gods. When the gods themselves were speaking (see image below), we could see Oedipus and Jocasta lying next to one another in bed, in white sheets – at their most vulnerable and intimate, yet also most guilty. The rectangle was probably my favourite part of the entire production, used to great effect.
The abstract shape separating gods from humans was sharply juxtaposed with the gods themselves, who in their outrageous outfits and behaviour felt more like the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s Magic Flute than ancient Greek gods (perhaps we may compare them with the representation of Zeus in Kaos; equally deliciously over the top and ridiculous).
There was the Grey-Eyed Godwoman modelled on Athena, who was pissed off at humans because they don’t respect the gods anymore. Dressed in gold (middle of the image below) and moving in a stylized way she felt more in tune with what I would imagine is ancient Egyptian dress but that made her power feel particularly old. There was the Moon (below, left) who shimmered across the stage and had hilarious conversations with the Sphinx. I loved the Sphinx (below, right), gnawing on huge bones and swishing her long tail across the stage while talking with a very thick accent.
Through her exploration of ancient Greek gods, Carr asks pertinent questions about the modern Irish (and I’m sure European as well) relationship with religion, scarred as it has become through the abuses and scandals of the catholic church which have come to light in recent decades. Can we restore our relationship with mystery and the divine in a more meaningful way? The goddesses are as ridiculous and vain as humans are oblivious and foolish in Carr’s plays, and even though the morals they impose on humans seem ‘right’ to us, their own behaviour doesn’t excuse them. Gods and humans act on the same stage, sometimes standing right alongside each other. Yet they don’t interact, and communication bizarrely takes place through physical contracts, which perhaps link back to holy scriptures (see image below for the Shee and Laius with a contract).
The Shee
There was one figure who stood out in between these foolish humans and ridiculous gods: the Shee. Olwen Fouéré brought to life my absolute favourite character of the entire event: a blend of the ancient seer Teiresias, the Delphic oracle, and the Irish daoine sí or fairy folk. She is the one character that is truthful, respected, serious, and with a moral compass that never wavers: she mediates between gods and humans, utters prophecies, and hands over the divine contracts. I just love what Carr and Fouéré bring to this character. In Greek myth, Teiresias is the seer associated with Oedipus’ family, but he is also known to have undergone multiple gender changes. Making Teiresias a ‘she/e’ connects him/her to Irish folklore as well as the current gender discourse – such a beautiful blending of cultural references in one name and character. (I could write a whole other blogpost on Carr’s representation of gender.)
Fouéré described her own role as minor, but I really didn’t see that at all: the Shee appears every time, just as in Sophocles’ plays, when characters need to be warned or put straight. Oedipus and Jocasta detest her because she tells the truth; Jocasta’s brother Creon does listen to her, but only when it is too late. In her big boots and long dress, the gender fluid Shee stomps across the stage proclaiming the truth, yet if there is any moral to the story, it is perhaps that humans tend to keep making the same mistakes again and again in spite of overwhelming evidence telling them that’s really not a good idea.
I’ve talked about ‘us’ humans versus the gods in this blogpost, but there’s also a narrative line about humans in power versus those who obey those in power. Minor characters on the stage are Laius’, Oedipus’, and Creon’s guards who have to obey their wishes and don’t always feel comfortable doing so, and female attendants who express worry and anxiety about the events that are unfolding among the rich and famous. Perhaps that clicked with me most of all, as I feel really quite helpless these days as those in power decide our futures for all of us.
Myth and trauma
I’ve been thinking about tragedy and modern anxieties a lot recently, not only for my book that’ll come out at the end of December, but also for a third-year module I’m teaching called ‘Greek Tragedy and Myth’. Watching modern plays (or movies, or reading novels) about ancient myth becomes difficult as an academic, when you’ve got all of your academic background knowledge vying for attention with your personal human experience of the plays. Carr’s production was wonderful, and as the plays were thought-provoking and even a bit bonkers at times (especially The Boy), they forced me take my understanding of the plays I’m currently teaching to another level yet again. I’ve only scratched the surface of the dense layers of meaning in Carr’s boundary-breaking diptych; there’s so much more to say but I don’t want to share all of the spoilers!
Both plays are beautiful and if you have the time, do go see them in one sitting, as it adds to the ’theatrical event’ experience. Personally, I found the rendering of Oedipus in Colonus (the first half of the second play) slightly less successful than the rest: there was a lot of dialogue with discussions of other Greeks mythological characters such as Orestes and Theseus which, while relevant at a mythological level, seemed to take away from the focus on the storylines of Oedipus in Colonus ánd Antigone. Nonetheless I found The God and his Daughter thought-provoking and beautifully rendered too – but if you’ve only got time to go see one, do go see The Boy.
More information (and I’ve also used the images from this site): https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/the-boy/
