Dublin's Theater Fest: Irish Angst, at the Source

The reason is the Dublin Theatre Festival. The theater scene here is normally small but intense. On a weekend in the fall or winter, there may be no more than four or five plays worth seeing.

That changes during the festival. This year 33 productions take the stage between Sept. 27 and Oct. 14. This is the 50th anniversary of the festival -- which claims to be the oldest in the English-speaking world -- and the pickings are particularly rich, says Artistic Director Loughlin Deegan.

'Sense of Danger'

What is it about Irish plays?

"We are part of an oral tradition where the poet was part of any local community," says Fiach Mac Conghail, director of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theater. "We look to writers to make sense of what is happening."

The Abbey, founded in 1904 by the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats and others, has been wrapped up in the republic's identity since the beginning. Seven actors from the Abbey participated in the famous Easter uprising against British rule in 1916; one was killed.

Fintan O'Toole, the sharp-tongued culture critic at the Irish Times, notes that quite a number of the leaders of the uprising had written plays ("usually pretty bad") themselves.

"Theater became the form of expression in which, for good and ill, the nation debated itself. Ireland needed this public forum in which it could play with what Ireland meant. It was central to the public world, not just a form of entertainment."

In 1907, for example, John Millington Synge staged his "The Playboy of the Western World" at the Abbey. Young Christy Mahon wanders into Flaherty's tavern and tells how he killed his tyrant dad by driving a spade into his skull. Christy's an instant hero. The barmaid falls for him. It was a savagely funny takedown of rural Catholic morality.

Dublin's response? Riots.

Folks here are serious about theater, even comedy. No moon-June-swoon musicals. O'Toole, previously theater critic at the New York Daily News for three years, thinks you are more likely to encounter plays trying to address public questions in Dublin than in New York, even though the Manhattan scene is exponentially bigger.

"In New York, the plays are either meant as private entertainment or they're very sexual," he says. "Dublin theater has a very communal urge. The other thing that's quite different is the extent of new work. In three years in New York I saw half a dozen significant new plays. The role of the new play here is extraordinarily important."

All that experimentation gives Irish theater a certain "sense of danger," he says. What Dublin doesn't have, he admits, is the depth of acting talent you find in New York. Although the best actors are as good as any in the world, those playing the middle roles are not as good as the actors in those roles in the United States. Still, Irish actors have a lot of character.