Irish, but not as New York knows it

With 'shamswastikas' instead of misty Yeatsian imagery, Irish shows in New York this year punctured critics' preconceptions, writes BELINDA McKEON.

YOU'RE IN A midtown Manhattan theatre. It's the opening night of an Irish musical comedy about espionage and intrigue during the second World War. Around you in the audience are some people who've seen the show before - in Ireland or in Edinburgh - and some who haven't. Many in the latter category happen to be members of the theatre's subscriber base. And, as is the case with many a midtown theatre, much of that subscriber base happens to be Jewish. So, here you sit, waiting for the moment you know is coming. The moment when two red banners emblazoned with a shamrock-swastika hybrid will fall open onstage, to the strains of a rousing IRA ballad, the chorus of which commences with the line: "A song and a smile and a Sieg and a Heil" and goes on: "To hell with the Jews, just light up a fuse/While the British are looking away."

Risky business? You could say that. And, certainly, at the opening night of Rough Magic's Improbable Frequencyearlier this month, as the shamswastikas unfurled and the Deutscher Grußsliced the air of the off-Broadway theatre 59E59, the mass intake of breath seemed, for a moment, as though it might segue into a mass exodus of patrons. But it emerged, instead, as a swell of ebullient - if slightly incredulous - laughter. And the laughter continued, even if the complications of puns-within-plot-twists and plot-twists-within-puns might, at moments, have become a bit much for an audience less than fluent in the political and cultural background of the era and the territory swooped upon by Arthur Riordan's book and lyrics.

The reviews, while mostly positive, reflected some of this befuddlement. Though praising the energy and humour of the show, Charles Isherwood in the New York Timeswarned that its "brand of Anglo-Irish silliness" was not for everyone. For himself, Isherwood claimed to be charmed and exasperated in equal measure by the wordplay and the madcappery of it all, giving a nod to one of Riordan's characters as he dubbed himself "the critical equivalent of Schrödinger's cat".

But it's not such a bad thing to bring to New York a piece of theatre which belongs clearly neither in one box or in another. (Or rather, which is a couple of different things in the same box at the same time. Or whatever it was that Schrödinger did with his damn cat.) The fact that every other musical in town will cost more than $300 (€220 million) during the premium-price holiday period (tickets soar to such heights between December 14 and January 1st ) can only help Improbable, which will remain at an admission cost of, at most, $60, throughout this seasonal madness. But, cost factor aside, and this being Rough Magic's New York debut, audiences and critics had little idea what to expect from Improbable . Preconceptionsabout Irish theatre - let alone Irish musical comedy - won't have been much help to them. Again, not such a bad thing.

Because, in fact, it has been the year of living variously for Irish theatre in New York. Improbable Frequency is far from being the first Irish show which critics have found difficult to pin down.

"Ireland, by way of Mars," wrote Variety's Sam Thielman of Pan Pan's Oedipus Loves You, which proved a smash at the downtown venue PS 122 in May. It was a description which could have applied to much of the theatre which came to New York; Irish, but not pigeonholed as such; Irish, but not "about" Ireland; Irish, but not as New York has known it before.

SOME OF THIS was down to the sheer number of productions which made it over here this year, with Culture Ireland's international funding making it possible for several companies to tour. The Abbey came in January and July, with Mark O'Rowe's Terminusand Kicking a Dead Horse(both co-productions with the Public); Semper Ficame in March with Ladies and Gentsin the Central Park public toilets; Druid arrived in April with Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farceat St Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn (Druid returns this month with Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaanat the Atlantic Theater); Pan Pan brought Oedipus Loves Youto PS 122 in May; and the Gate came with three Beckett works ( Eh Joe, I'll Go Onand First Love) to the Lincoln Center in July; and Donal O'Kelly's Catalpatoured to the Irish Arts Centre.

Meanwhile, and the Manhattan-based company Origin launched its first Irish festival, dedicated to staging NY premieres of Irish plays, in September. Its eight shows included End of Lines, a series of short plays inspired by trips on the New York subway by the Irish playwrights Gary Duggan, Pat Kinevane, Ursula Rani Sarma, Morna Regan and Abbie Spallen. In June, Jim Norton won a Tony award for his performance in the Broadway production of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer(which had closed in March).

It was a diverse tapestry of work - some of it brilliant, some of it less so. Taken all together, it formed a snapshot of contemporary Irish theatre that was at once fuller and more confounding than that of any recent year's crop in New York.

In the reviews, gushing as many of them were - Ben Brantley on The Walworth Farceand Oedipus Loves You, and Charles Isherwood on Eh, Joewere particular raves - it was clear that New York critics were no longer certain of the box into which to put this thing called "Irish theatre". They leaned back towards old familiars - the "good old Irish pathos" in Oedipus; the "authentically Irish" touches in Walworth; nods towards Friel, McDonagh and McPherson which glossed the complexities of those writers and set them functioning solely as brands - but seemed at a loss to make these familiars fit into the physical and intellectual forcefield created by the plays they saw before them.

In the case of some critics, the strident naming of the new let slip an astonishingly hackneyed perception of the existing shape and identity of Irish theatre; End of Lineswas different, said the Times, because its plays did not evoke "the misty Yeatsian image of the Celtic Twilight"; Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirlyielded to no typical "bog of plummy prose or nostalgia"; Ronan Noone's The Atheist(currently running Off-Broadway) shrugged off "begorra poetry" and "blarney and moonshine". And in nearby New Haven, the Fishamble production of Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Streetwas praised for being devoid of the usual Irish "lucky charms". With such traits as taglines, who needs enemies?

The knowledge that Irish theatre could be its own worst enemy seemed to bubble under the best of the work on show in New York in 2008, and it gave rise to a new edge, a new irreverence towards those sacred cows, those very touchstones by virtue of which an Irish play in the US can always, somehow, manage to get off the hook for almost any number of glitches in structure or plot. Walworthsatirised storytelling, both as a culture and as a theatrical device - and satirised Ireland, its theatre and its self-mythology into the bargain. Oedipusshrugged off recognisable form. Terminussurged with a defiant, demoniac Dublinese, only vaguely tempered for accessibility to American ears. Improbableburst forth with a gleeful, intellectual impiety. The Gate did what it wanted with Beckett (making theatre of three pieces not written for theatre) and the Abbey brought an American play to American soil.

GRANTED, THERE WILL always be a place for blarney and moonshine in some theatres. A handful of venues and cultural centres in New York cater - though certainly not exclusively - to an Irish-American audience who'd prefer to see their Ireland as they remember (or imagine) it. But 2008 has arguable altered the landscape for Irish theatre artists in New York, scattering categories, shattering cliches, breaking moulds; energetically undermining any notion of Irish theatre itself as a straightforward or portable entity. And yet, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. There could hardly be a more fitting piece to finish it all off, on Sunday, than McDonagh's blistering satire The Cripple of Inishmaan, with its islanders who dream of stardom in America; with its surface quaintness and its steel of darkness and self-savagery flashing beneath; with its knowledge of the deep need for stories and the traps into which they lead us.

As McDonagh's Johnnypateen might say, in all his inimitable tact: "Ireland mustn't be such a bad place, so, if the Yanks want to put our plays on."

On the unfurling of shamswastikas, however, there's no knowing what Johnnypateen might say.