Irish drama on the cusp

Theatre:The history of Irish theatre is a history of dialogue between generations, tributes to lost values and confrontations with the past. Christopher Murray, whose essay lends this collection its title, calls these series of reverberations "echoes".

It is significant that he borrows this idea from Arthur Miller, because this latest study of Irish theatre does not merely identify the endlessly self-referential narratives of Irish theatre history - its "frequent doubling back", its "recapitulation".

As editors Patrick Lonergan and Riana O'Dwyer emphasise in their concise and incisive introduction, Echoes Down the Corridor aims to make connections between Irish theatre and its international context: from the influence of intercultural performance traditions on the development of Irish drama since the 1900s to the performance of contemporary Irish theatre in the global marketplace.

Murray's informative essay, a historical survey of 100 years at the Abbey Theatre, follows this remit, not just by drawing its analogy from Miller, but by examining the impact of contact with European modernism on the development of the Abbey: from the naturalist influences of André Antoine's Théâtre Libre, Ibsen's social realism and Meyerhold's symbolist movement to the preponderance of versions/translations of modern European classics by contemporary writers such as Murphy, Barry, McGuinness and Friel. (That Friel's version of Uncle Vanya is about to open at the Gate Theatre, and McGuinness's translation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle recently closed at the Peacock makes his argument particularly pertinent for this reviewer).

Essays on the relationship between Synge and Hardy, O'Casey and Brecht, and Lennox Robinson and the Japanese playwright Shoyo Matsui (in a fascinating examination of the relationship between Eastern and Western theatre by Chiaki Kojima) continue these far-reaching associations. Paul O'Brien's argument, in Sean O'Casey and the Abbey Theatre: A Conflicted Relationship, builds on Alan Simpson's contemporary opinion that "O'Casey was ahead of his time, notably in his conception of dramatic technique" and that there were few directors with the "basic crafts required to handle well plays of a type that O'Casey was turning out in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s". (O'Brien's point also seems particularly relevant as the Abbey stages rehearsed readings of three O'Casey plays as part of this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, including The Bishop's Bonfire, which has never been performed at the Abbey. It will be directed by Wayne Jordan, who is best known for his experimental work with Randolf SD/The Company.)

Other essays deal with more contemporary work by Friel and Murphy, while there are two welcome essays exploring female subjectivity in the plays of Marina Carr and Marie Jones. There are also two essays on Frank McGuinness; Helen Lojek's meticulous study of the performance history of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme being particularly useful, tracing as it does the relationship between performance and reception in specific social contexts, nationally and internationally.

The final two essays in the collection are enlightening studies of the conditions in which Irish drama is being produced and interpreted at present. Jason King's essay, Beyond Ryanga: the Image of Africa in Contemporary Irish Theatre, goes farther than typical treatments of Irish multiculturalism as "a space of imaginative overlap between Irish historical memories of migration and the experiences of immigrants in Ireland now"; that is a space where cultural difference is neutralised by refracting the experience of immigrants through the lens of Irish social history, providing historical consolation for an Irish audience, but no parallel political empowerment for its subjects. Focusing on the work of Donal O'Kelly and George Seremba, King identifies a more progressive narrative of theatrical representation at work, linking their theatre to the possibility of "social change." However, as King is forced to concede at the end of his essay, even this more political dramaturgy proves little material consolation; social transformation can be only "fitfully realised in the world off-stage".

Lisa Fitzpatrick approaches the issue of a changing Ireland theoretically, with a reading of Marina Carr's Ariel and Sebastian Barry's Hinterland as transitional dramas that attempt to negotiate a path between "national myths whose elements no longer function, and a new mythology that is either more local, more pan-national, or, more likely, is simultaneously both."

"Irish theatre", Fitzpatrick argues, "is at a liminal point." And so, while the past and the present of Irish theatre might be momentarily visible in this insightful collection of essays, the future, it seems, is still uncertain.

Sara Keating is a freelance arts writer and theatre critic

Echoes Down the Corridor: Irish Theatre - Past, Present and Future Edited by Patrick Lonergan and Riana O'Dwyer IASIL Studies in Irish Literature/Carysfort Press, 202pp. €20