Garry Hynes's new production of John B. Keane's Big Maggie takes a hard line with the playwright's text. Heretofore, this has been a rip-roaring, almost triumphalist comedy romp on behalf of what has been perceived as the down-trodden woman in Irish rural society. This production takes Maggie at the face value the script portrays, as a domestic tyrant who, when her philandering husband is buried, directs her tyranny against her family and anyone else who might try to get the better of her, particularly when it's a matter of money. And although it still gets its fair share of the laughs which Keane has embedded in the text, on the assumption that the woman is finally getting control over her life, Maggie herself comes across as a concerned but deeply unsatisfactory parent and person.
Here the grown-up children whom she has subjected to quite unacceptable dictatorship are quite right to leave the loveless home that she has constructed for them. Her son Mick is the first to leave for England, and then the submissive Gert follows. Then the hard-working Maurice, to whom she effectively denies the opportunity to marry the girl he loves, follows them with his now pregnant girl-friend, and even the seemingly venal Katie, who has already submitted to her pressure to marry a man she does not love, decides that she will no longer visit her mother's shop for the groceries she may need. It is not a pretty picture of family life, and maybe its author intended it so, but this production reveals the lovelessness and cupidity that many earlier audiences had not perceived through their continuous laughter.
Marie Mullen's Maggie is a performance by an actor absolutely in control, both technically and emotionally. Peter Gaynor's Mick, Owen McDonnell's Maurice, Norma Sheahan's Gert and Dawn Bradfield's Katie are all fully rounded people as they grow to resist intimidation in the only way that is allowed to them. Peter Hanly's flash and beddable salesman, Teddy Heelin, never stands a chance in this crowd, and Eamon Morrissey's undertaker Byrne acts beautifully as if he always knew he would never stand a chance with Maggie anyway.
Even the "chorus" of Bill Hickey's Old Man and Peg Powers's Old Woman are only in the action for what small pickings they might get out of it, and the efforts of Sarah Jane Drummey's pregnant girl-friend and her would-be blackmailing mother, played vigourously by Maire Hastings, were never likely to get around Maggie's ruthless steely analysis of their situation. Notwithstanding the laughter (which subsided gradually as the reality conjured by the production became clear) this is a bleak emotional picture of rural life.
Francis O'Connor's stark grey settings added to the bleakness in David Cunningham's pale clear lighting, and the whole quite properly earned a solid welcome from its audience. This is a Big Maggie the like of which has not been seen before, at least not as clearly as it can (and should) be seen now.
Runs until March 17th. To book phone (01) 878 7222.
