View from the Green Room: War makes heroes and demons
Megan McDonnell and Mary Murray in Fishamble's Outrage.
Fishamble theatre company's “Outrage” follows the fortunes of two sisters – feisty intellectual Alice (Megan McDonnell) and rabid, unyielding Republican (Mary Murray), who bicker and plot a pathway through the propaganda war that is Ireland from the War of Independence through to the Civil War.
Working from a typewriter and a small printing press, in a cluttered attic space that evokes civil barricades, chaos and the social confusion of the age, the sisters document British atrocities.
Meantime, the War of Independence works out into the new political reality of a partitioned nation that not everyone wants.
Deirdre Kinahan’s script moves quickly through the War of Independence, Truce, Treaty negotiations, Dáil divisions, a bitter Civil War and finally ends up in Chicago where villainous Free Stater Pat Finney is on a fund-raising lecture tour. And it is Pat Finney who stalks the sisters and wreaks havoc in their personal lives.
Nothing is as vicious as a civil war – as the sisters discover. Despite the presence of Alice’s PJ (Naoise Dunbar), her Republican lover and soon-to-be husband, there are no mitigating factors when they take sides in the propaganda war against the Free State. Former friend and ally Finney leads a squad of Free State soldiers to their Newbridge printing works and rape the heavily-pregnant Alice who subsequently loses the child and destroys her will to live.
Pat Finnerty haunts the script. His name booms out like a bell that tolls ever louder and Finnerty’s propaganda war against the two women destroys their reputations… ”firebrand, hothead, diehard… brothel… worshipping the devil”. Anything that would justify the crimes committed against Alice and Nell.
Kinahan’s script and Jim Culleton’s direction leave little room for ambiguity. This is Civil War Ireland where only the Free State narrative is heard. It’s a drama that challenges the official storyline of the new republic in a storm of argument and violence, and where violence against women is used as a weapon of war. Naoise Dunbar, Megan McDonnell and Mary Murray’s performances are powerful and leave little room for sentiment.
The whirlwind script does land a little too cleanly, however. Nell’s diehard character appears cold and heartless while Alice seems to be driven by the excitement of Easter Week and not its political goal to the point where her character’s determination becomes confused. Was she really naive and that much of an Anti-Treatyite? And how did PJ – who wants to accept the Treaty – allow his family’s printing works to be used in the Anti-Treaty propaganda war? And what convinced him to hand his child over to Nell to rear?
Powerful acting and strong storytelling allows us to focus on violent incidents that have long been whitewashed out of the history of our young state.
“War makes heroes and demons,” says PJ. Maybe it’s time to remember.
