Review by Judy Murphy

Druid Theatre’s much-anticipated production of Sean O'Casey’s anti-war play, The Silver Tassie, at the Town Hall Theatre is massive in scale and attention to detail. So massive, in fact, that sometimes the mechanics interfere with the action of the play and the dynamic between the characters.

That’s not a problem initially when the action opens in the living/bedroom of a Dublin tenement as young footballing hero, Harry Heegan (Aaron Monaghan) and his neighbour Teddy Foran (Liam Carney) are set to return to the Great War. They have been on leave, during which time Harry has led his soccer team to glory in winning the silver tassie of the title. The team has won the cup for the fourth time, so it becomes theirs to keep and it will feature again at the end of the play when it comes to symbolise all that Harry has lost in the war.
There’s a lot going on in that first act. The comic element comes thick and fast from Harry’s father Sylvester (Éamon Morrissey) and Simon (John Olohan), a bowler hatted duo who are reminiscent of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Meanwhile Derbhle Crotty as Mrs Foran, is dying to get her husband back to the war so she can do ‘what I likes’.
Susan Monican (Clare Dunne), who is in love with Harry, is trying to convert all around her to a brand of God-fearing Christianity in a blackly comic sort of way. The young, handsome Harry, however, is besotted with Jessie (Aoife Duffin) and is in no rush to return to the Front, despite his mother’s (Ruth Hegarty) best efforts to shoo him out the door.
Here, the impressive set and lighting serve as a backdrop to the action. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of Act Two where a giant tank, complete with moving gun, dominates the stage. As a concept, it might have merit, but in real terms, you are left wondering how the actors can actually move in these cramped surroundings. And then there’s the music. Song is important in O’Casey’s work, but here genuine moments of pathos were diminished by the intrusive music and singing. The presence of a shiny silver flute amid the debris of France’s battlefields was incongruous to say the least.
The religious symbolism which runs throughout The Silver Tassie is to the fore in this act and continues in Act 3, with a crucifix dominating the ward of the hospital where a paralysed Harry is being treated. He shares the ward – inexplicably – with the Sylvester and Simon, in their nightshirts and still with their bowler hats on, who are still bantering merrily. The men’s names have been replaced by numbers, and their nurse is the once god-fearing Susan, who has become quite the dominatrix.
But, while the play picks up here, it struggles to re-engage with the audience after the flat, over-long second act an never really recovers its energy, despite the best efforts of the actors, several of whom had multiple roles.
The silver tassie re-emerges in the final act, when Harry rages at the world and his former love Jessie for all he has lost. The football club is the venue for a dance in which the blind and crippled are excluded from the world of the able-bodied and where life goes on, leaving them behind.
The staging here is superb, with choreographed releasing of balloons and clever use of lighting and shadow, as the blind Mr Foran leads Harry away from the party.
The Silver Tassie, with its mix of realism and expressionism, is a challenging play to stage and is certainly not O’Casey’s greatest work, but it does have a real pathos. Druid’s production, by including much that was unnecessary and by focusing so much on the comic element, has sacrificed much of that to present a Silver Tassie where the parts are greater than the whole.
The Silver Tassie runs in the Town Hall Theatre until September 7 with tickets costing €25/€18 concession.