their terror and beauty; to make a version of this story which will resonate for audiences now, for people who may have no knowledge of the broader mythology or the literary tradition this new play would draw upon.
There’s a universal and timeless power in the story of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna, and like all the great tales of love and betrayal there’s an innate humanity and theatricality. Great stories deserve to be retold and reinterpreted; and perhaps Deirdre has not yet been seen in anything like her naked human potential – sexual, devious, innocent, passionate, complex – not just fated, beautiful, tragic.
A new Deirdre could be timely (the end of Tara for one thing), a modern telling of an old story to make young people sit up and take notice of the past.
One thing I know I don’t want to do: ‘create something quiet and stately and restrained’!
March 10:
Re-reading Synge’s plays I’m amazed that no one was killed over the head of them. Mere audience riots seem mild when you consider how daring, how brave, how true they are. They might have killed someone if The Tinker’s Wedding had been produced in Dublin when it was first written: mind you, that someone would probably have been Augusta Gregory - or some poor tinker reeling in the street.
For some reason I’m thinking about my first encounter with the ‘Rejoyce and Synge Society’ in Sydney abut fifteen years ago. I turned up a bit raw and idealistic, thinking they’d be interested in a young, living, aspiring writer. I had a bunch of small booklets of my own poems to sell and I noticed one young woman looking at them like they were compulsory smallpox samples. I don’t think anyone actually bought one, though a few of the people there later became friends of mine. It was my first lesson in how Irish people abroad often don’t want their literary or political certainties disturbed: dead poets can’t talk back, living ones might say something unpleasant.
March 13:
Our neighbour, Mrs Lee, a widow and great friend to me in my youth, hated Synge. Whenever Playboy was broadcast on Radio Eireann she’d have a small paroxysm of indignation and anger. ‘I can’t stand listening to it,’ – she’d mimic some mouthful of the language and shake her head. ‘Is it any wonder the people went to America to get away from the likes of that?’
March 15:
Exactly two years since I saw Olivier Py’s production of Le Soulier de satin , ( The Satin Slipper ) by Paul Claudel in Orléans. It was one of those profound experiences, almost religious, which occur now and again in a lifetime of theatre going (Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire was the first for me). Soulier was extraordinarily beautiful, funny, transcendent, dazzling the eye and the mind.
Something from that afternoon, from the play, from the music of it, seeped into the Deirdre I was writing. When I’d written a full draft we sent it to Py and word came back that he’d love to direct it. I went to see Soulier again in Paris that September and went back to Orléans the following April for Olivier’s own play Les Vainquers . We hit it off right away; he’d gone to the Aran Islands when he was about twenty and went back to France to find somewhere similar to live, settling on Oeussant, an island off Brittany. Olivier said he was glad my Deirdre wasn’t in the style of Synge. I said it couldn’t be; I hope it’s my style, me.
March 17:
I deliberately chose not to call my new play Deirdre as it was in early drafts, mainly to avoid confusion with the plays by Yeats and Synge. Despite this, confusion is created: I read that A Cry From Heaven is (quote) ‘a version of Deirdre of the Sorrows by J.M. Synge’, and am livid. The story is older than all of us – as Synge knew so well – and how could anyone have the temerity (or be stupid enough) to write a version of his play. The truth is that I feel Synge’s Deirdre is the weakest of his plays, even allowing for the fact that it wasn’t
There’s a universal and timeless power in the story of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna, and like all the great tales of love and betrayal there’s an innate humanity and theatricality. Great stories deserve to be retold and reinterpreted; and perhaps Deirdre has not yet been seen in anything like her naked human potential – sexual, devious, innocent, passionate, complex – not just fated, beautiful, tragic.
A new Deirdre could be timely (the end of Tara for one thing), a modern telling of an old story to make young people sit up and take notice of the past.
One thing I know I don’t want to do: ‘create something quiet and stately and restrained’!
March 10:
Re-reading Synge’s plays I’m amazed that no one was killed over the head of them. Mere audience riots seem mild when you consider how daring, how brave, how true they are. They might have killed someone if The Tinker’s Wedding had been produced in Dublin when it was first written: mind you, that someone would probably have been Augusta Gregory - or some poor tinker reeling in the street.
For some reason I’m thinking about my first encounter with the ‘Rejoyce and Synge Society’ in Sydney abut fifteen years ago. I turned up a bit raw and idealistic, thinking they’d be interested in a young, living, aspiring writer. I had a bunch of small booklets of my own poems to sell and I noticed one young woman looking at them like they were compulsory smallpox samples. I don’t think anyone actually bought one, though a few of the people there later became friends of mine. It was my first lesson in how Irish people abroad often don’t want their literary or political certainties disturbed: dead poets can’t talk back, living ones might say something unpleasant.
March 13:
Our neighbour, Mrs Lee, a widow and great friend to me in my youth, hated Synge. Whenever Playboy was broadcast on Radio Eireann she’d have a small paroxysm of indignation and anger. ‘I can’t stand listening to it,’ – she’d mimic some mouthful of the language and shake her head. ‘Is it any wonder the people went to America to get away from the likes of that?’
March 15:
Exactly two years since I saw Olivier Py’s production of Le Soulier de satin , ( The Satin Slipper ) by Paul Claudel in Orléans. It was one of those profound experiences, almost religious, which occur now and again in a lifetime of theatre going (Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire was the first for me). Soulier was extraordinarily beautiful, funny, transcendent, dazzling the eye and the mind.
Something from that afternoon, from the play, from the music of it, seeped into the Deirdre I was writing. When I’d written a full draft we sent it to Py and word came back that he’d love to direct it. I went to see Soulier again in Paris that September and went back to Orléans the following April for Olivier’s own play Les Vainquers . We hit it off right away; he’d gone to the Aran Islands when he was about twenty and went back to France to find somewhere similar to live, settling on Oeussant, an island off Brittany. Olivier said he was glad my Deirdre wasn’t in the style of Synge. I said it couldn’t be; I hope it’s my style, me.
March 17:
I deliberately chose not to call my new play Deirdre as it was in early drafts, mainly to avoid confusion with the plays by Yeats and Synge. Despite this, confusion is created: I read that A Cry From Heaven is (quote) ‘a version of Deirdre of the Sorrows by J.M. Synge’, and am livid. The story is older than all of us – as Synge knew so well – and how could anyone have the temerity (or be stupid enough) to write a version of his play. The truth is that I feel Synge’s Deirdre is the weakest of his plays, even allowing for the fact that it wasn’t
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