Druid creating magic with Coole Gregory production

Driving into Coole Park at dusk on an autumn evening and seeing people congregating around the tea rooms of Lady Gregory’s former estate, with Druid Theatre banners flying, you could sense the excitement in the air. We were going to see plays; real live plays.

Druid Theatre’s production of a selection of Lady Gregory’s one-act plays is the company’s contribution to Galway 2020. It was taking place outdoors; it was socially distant but it was live theatre. So, it was a receptive audience and Druid didn’t disappoint.

Lady Gregory, the doyenne of Coole Park is best known these days as a patron of Irish literature, but she was a prolific writer too and in the early days of the National Theatre, her plays – largely based on local characters around South Galway and with social and cultural messages – featured there regularly.

She’s since passed into oblivion as a writer. And, being honest, several the plays being staged by Druid are fairly slight.

The five we saw were The Rising of the Moon, The Gaol Gate, Hyacinth Halvey, McDonough’s Wife and Cathleen Ní Houlihan.

But they’re also fascinating and an insight into the mind of this avid folklore collector, a member of the aristocracy who took it upon herself to engage with peasant culture and who recognised its richness.

Although, a landlord, she also recognised what the peasants had to endure. On one occasion, this gatherer of stories from around Gort and south Galway remarked that what struck her most was ‘the poverty of the tellers and the splendour of the tales’.

Her plays reflect that dichotomy, filled with larger-than-life characters and with stories where messages about poverty and politics are recurring themes. The Rising of the Moon and the Gaol Gate are examples of this – one first one humorous and the second definitely not.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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