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

"Their very specific personality hasn't been trained out of them" at acting schools, O'Toole says.

A Recent Invention

Dublin has two famous theater companies, the Abbey and the Gate. The Abbey's second, smaller theater, the Peacock, often stages experimental plays such as "Terminus." For the theater festival, it is presenting the Irish premiere of Marina Carr's "The Woman and the Scarecrow," in which a dying mother of eight looks back on her life. It includes the very Irish line: "Happiness! Everyone thinks they have a God-given right to it. Sure it's only a recent invention of the Sunday papers."

The Gate has a reputation as the more cosmopolitan of the two, though the distinction is blurring. For the festival, it's doing Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," adapted by Irish playwright Brian Friel.

A number of promising smaller companies -- Rough Magic, Corn Exchange, Pan Pan, Bedrock and CoisCeim Dance Theatre -- perform at various spaces around town. (All have Web sites.)

These days, what may be the country's most remarkable theater is not in Dublin. It's Galway's tiny Druid Theatre. Getting there means a three-hour drive or a four-hour train ride. But visiting the country's rugged west coast can be an adventure. And plenty of hotels and guesthouses will put you up for a night. Regulars say there's always some fun -- "a bit of craic" (say "crack") -- at the Galway pubs after a Druid show.

The Druid's director is highly regarded Garry Hynes, who collected a Tony for the Broadway production of Martin McDonagh's "The Beauty Queen of Leenane." During the theater festival, the Druid is coming to Dublin. Hynes is staging Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night." James Cromwell ("The Queen," "Babe," "L.A. Confidential") takes on the monumental role of James Tyrone in this story of the sodden wreckage of an Irish American family.

Dramatic Tiger

For a long time, the stereotypical Irish script simmered with people hating each other in the kitchen.

And when you think about it, why shouldn't these plays sop up the country's bile? After all, aren't the Irish working in a tongue forced down their throats on the tip of an English bayonet?

But the rural character of Irish drama is changing, because Irish society itself has jackknifed. For years, poverty and famine ruled. People couldn't wait to leave. But in the past two decades, tech companies have flourished and the economy has metamorphosed into the "Celtic Tiger."

It's one of the fastest-growing countries in Europe, full of Indian IT workers, Polish plumbers, Turkish laborers, Spanish telemarketers and African traders.

Now that's part of the theater, too. For the festival, the Abbey is reimagining Synge's "Playboy" retooled by Irish writer Roddy Doyle (the 1991 film "The Commitments" is based on his novel) and Nigerian-born Bisi Adigun, who founded an African theater company here.

This time it's set in a Dublin pub, not a rural tavern. And Christy Mahon has morphed into Nigerian refugee Christopher Malomo, who whacked his old man not with a spade but with a pestle used for pounding yams.

Actors in Pots

Mark O'Rowe also probes the entrails of the Celtic Tiger.

His is a dysfunctional, urban Ireland. Two scenes in "Terminus" involve people having sex (after a fashion) on the arm of a construction crane high above Dublin. Before things sort themselves out, you've experienced two homicides, a fatal accident, a worm-riddled antihero and a man who sells his soul so that he can sing "Wind Beneath My Wings" and hit the high note just like Bette Midler.

It's a series of interlocking monologues written in a shuddering, syncopated, loose-limbed rhyming verse. (Critic O'Toole rates the playwright's linguistic skills "astounding.") The characters stay put, each in a pool of spotlight on a bare stage facing the audience, spinning a tale of flying demons, gyrating angels, a bloody bar fight and a plunge from a 25-story crane.

Irish playwrights have been using monologues to tell their stories for more than 100 years. It's a tradition that goes back to W.B. Yeats and Beckett, who joked that he'd like to put the actors in pots so they wouldn't dash about and detract from the exquisitely crafted words.

"A lot of people complain about the monologue form, saying it isn't really theater," O'Rowe says. "And maybe they're right. There's an element of stand-up there and maybe a literary novelistic thing going on, too. For me, I just like the immediacy and connection of actors speaking directly to an audience. Also, specifically with 'Terminus,' there was so much story to tell and so much fantastical stuff going on, that performing it simply through language seemed like the logical choice. Which might beg the question, why didn't I write it as a book? The only answer I can give to that one is that I like seeing my stuff performed on the stage."

His rationale may come as close as anything else to explaining why so many brilliant Irish writers are writing plays.

John Pancake is arts editor of The Washington Post.