Review of Irish Studies in Europe (Jun 2021)
Hilton Edwards, Brecht and the Brechtian
Abstract
The Dublin Gate Theatre Company’s repertory of international, often experimental plays offers perhaps the clearest distinction between the Gate and the Abbey in the mid-twentieth century. A growing body of scholarship focuses on how Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir deployed innovative, non-realistic staging techniques and brought to Ireland design elements associated with European artists. The Gate’s international remit can also be seen in its production of plays not merely authored by foreign playwrights, but focused on issues outside the conventional purview of Irish politics, including anti-Semitism and totalitarianism. Throughout his career, Hilton Edwards often sought out non-realistic dramaturgies to critique modern institutions. Some of the plays chosen by Edwards and mac Liammóir were so provocative, socially-conscious, and politically-charged that they challenged the prevailing ethos in Catholic Ireland and incurred the wrath of the Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons’ Association. Edwards’ exposure to Bertolt Brecht’s plays, theories, and the 1956 London performances by the Berliner Ensemble prompted not only his production of Mother Courage in 1959 and Saint Joan of the Stockyards two years later, but also his greater willingness to comment on theatre, for example on the radio and in his book The Mantle of Harlequin (1958). Edwards shared with Brecht an awareness of music as integral to performance and a vision of theatre unconstrained by realism and the proscenium arch. Although the Gate repertory of new productions in the post-Emergency era may appear unsurprising, that perspective is informed by the half century in which dramatists such as Arthur Miller and Brecht emerged canonical figures. Hilton Edwards’ direction of Mother Courage and Saint Joan of the Stockyards advanced the Gate’s internationalism and helped to reshape the political nature of Irish theatre.
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