Peter Costello
The King’s Servants, But Ireland’s First: A Play for Radio and Stage
by J. Anthony Gaughan
(Kingdom Books, €15.00 / £11.99)
J.A. Gaughan is a well-established historian of his native Listowel, Co. Kerry. And this drama strikes out from one of his earlier books, The Recollections of Constable Mee.
It deals in dramatic rather than historical form, with the RIC mutiny at Listowel Barracks in March 1920, when 15 men refused a transfer to make way for the quasi-military Black and Tans, then set on their campaign of terror in Kerry. The RIC men in the plays are a microcosm of the different attitudes, the divided loyalties of the time. The Ulster officer of the Tans is especially effective. (One of the RIC later became a bishop in Nigeria.)
The book presents two forms of the play, one for radio and one for the stage. The stage version loses some of the short scenes that are essential to radio drama, but for the most part the text is the same.
However, in reading them I much preferred the radio version. It seems to move along with the immediacy and the thrust of a Shakespearean play, and one suspects that, in the hands of a certain kind of producer, this might make for a more effective stage presentation that the actual version envisaged for the play.
It is the author’s hope that this play should cast an oblique illumination over the revolutionary period with its ambiguities, its exploitation of individuals, the thirst for power of different groups, be they army officers or the men in the RIC. The IRA and Sinn Fein remain off stage, not universally approved of.
However, these days drama groups and local theatre are hesitant about the presentation of new plays. In the old days the amateur drama movement made the name of J. B. Keane and others. But not now. Too much is involved to risk anything except an established play, one that has already made a name at the Gate or the Abbey or in London.
A full length production, perhaps in a form that echoes both Shakespearean drama and the agitprop of the 1920s might allow some of the scenes to be extended. But as it is the published play makes for a vivid read, and an enlightening one. The lights and shadows of our past in all their ambiguity are revealed.
And perhaps too the author might have followed Shaw or Hochhuth in providing an historical preface or afterword to deal with the themes of the play. But that is not the fashion this day. A play is supposed to speak for itself, and this one certainly does. Let us hope some theatre management in Kerry can be found to put it in production before the centenary of the mutiny itself comes round.
