Sean O’Casey’s Latest Play

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 31

Sean O’Casey’s Latest Play

“THE SILVER TASSIE” BITTER AND CYNICAL “The Silver Tassie,” by Sean O’Casey, is a cry of pain wrung from the lips of an onlooker at the war who has been deeply moved by the spectacle of human suffering, writes St. John Ervine in the Loudon “Observer.” It is a bitter and cynical play, and occasionally it is unjust, but it is also intensely human, a piece ot passion that is sometimes strangely unimpassionate. In the middle of its brilliant farce, its symbolised agony, its preoccupation with the small glories of small people suddenly caught up from their small lives, and thrown into a gigantic misery, the sensitive mind percieves a pattern appearing; the pattern of bewildered men and women obliged to endure suffering beyond their comprehension or desert. Mr. O’Casey has looked on at this spectacle and been tormented by it, and here, in a manner that is at once austere and disorderly, he presents it to us. The play is full of faults, and Mr. O'Casey is careless with his details and, worse, with his characters, although he contrives to be careless with them in a way that leaves the onlooker feeling that his carelessness is magnificently calculated and right. Records Changes He does not account for changes of nature; he merely records them. Susie Monican suffers from a sort of religious mania iu the first act, but when we see her again, in the third, she lias shed her hell-five doctrines, and is dancing her way to the devil. Mr. O’Casey does not attempt to explain her, nor, indeed, is it necessary, since the imagination is sufficiently provoked by the strange play for the onlookers to understand precisely what has happened without any dramatic explanation. The trouble with Mr. O’Casey, however, is that he achieves these effects less by design than by divination; he is a genius not by intention, but by accident. Cruelly Unjust

And because he seems not to know what he is doing, he is as likely to ruin his work as he is to make a success. He can be cruelly unjust, as he is throughout this piece, to all but private soldiers. That injustice, however, need not seriously disturb us, since it is unimportant in the play, although it is important to Mr. O’Casey himself, who must guard against a rancour that may render him too sour to make the most of his own abilities. What is important is that in this confused play, in which the author dashes from method to method, some of the private soldier's mind is most vividly portrayed. He does uot sentimentalise his class, but neither does he brutalise it. He does not flatter his people, but neither does lie humiliate them. Mrs. Heegau, the thin, whining mother of the hero who was such a fine footballer until the shell paralysed his legs, is in dread lest her son should miss the leave train, and, in consequence, her maintenance allowance should be lost. There is a terrible truth in that piece of characterisation. A woman iu a Devonshire village, remarked when her husband was given a job in the navy during the war which involved him in great danger that she was very glad of it, for it meant an extra sixpence a day added on to his pay! Poor men and women have learnt to accept the facts of life without whimpering. Singular Beauty The second act, in which the war is formalised, has a singular beauty, but its effect was spoiled by Mr. O’Casey’s characteristic inability to realise what is the right moment at which to stop. The last act is extraordinarily fine in the delicacy and skill with which its effects are obtained. The spectacle of the broken soldiers striving to catch a little of the joy they won for other people, and lamentably failing to do so, is heartrending, but Mr. O Casey, who can be as bitter as the rest of us, allows the poet in him to be the master of this act. The suffering is intense, but he casts no blame on any of the people^ Mr. O’Casey has experimented in style in “The Silver Tassie,” and the experiment nearly succeeds. He has not yet finished with it, but clearly he is approaching a fine achievement. I note, not without cynicism, that Ireland rejected this remarkable play, and that England accepted it. This is not the first—nor will it be the last —time that the English have given a chance to an Irishman that the Irish denied him. For the production and performance of the play I have nothing but the highest praise. Mr. Raymond Massey here displays talents as a producer which hint at something like genius in him. The formalised scenes in the second act, concluding with a moving litany to God and the guns, were arranged with majestic austerity. Gratitude of Playgoers

“The Silver Tassie" is not a play that will .cause people to form queues for 30 hours. It is too near our recent agony for that. Nor is it a play that people will wish to see many times. One ought not to wish to see a play full of suffering more than once. To have, that wish -would be to ( show a cruel and insensitive nature. But it is a play that every person ought to see. Mr. Cochran, who put it on the stage, has earned again the gratitude of discerning playgoers. I feel humiliated when I reflect that a West End manager has done what the directors of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin declined to do. Mr. Augustus John designed the scenery for the second act. It is very beautiful. At a recent dinner of the London Critics’ Circle, R. C. Sherriff, author of “Journey’s End,” said that it was the first occasion on which he had shaken hands with George Bernard Shaw. Only a year ago, when the fate of his play hung terribly in the balance, a friend told him to send it to Mr. Shaw for his opinion, and said, “For God's sake, see that it is typed.” He set to work at night feverishly to type it! He had a letter in reply from Mr. Shaw, and that letter would never be sold by him. Among the many precious pieces of advice it contained was, “Don’t burn your house down to roast your pig.” That was his first taste of being taken notice of by a great man. He wanted to thank the critics enormously for the help given to him in his first play, and when he had finished another he hoped it would equal his first.