The Silver Tassie at The Lyttleton

Sean O’Casey had a bit of a blow to his self esteem in March 1928, when his play, The Silver Tassie, was rejected by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.  All his previous plays had premiered here but not this one, thanks, in no small measure, to the theatre’s founding director, W.B. Yeats.  In a letter to O’Casey, Yeats stated “You are not interested in the Great War; you never stood on its battlefields or walked its hospitals, and so write out of your opinions.  You illustrate those opinions by a series of almost unrelated scenes as you might in a leading article”. 

A rather imperious response to the playwright’s new offering but, having seen this latest adaptation at The Lyttleton, I do have some sympathies with Mr. Yeats. 

The Silver Tassie consists of four Acts, the first of which is set in a Dublin tenement.  So far so O’Casey.  We are introduced to two old codgers, Sylvester Heegan and Simon Norton who are awaiting the arrival of the jubilant local football team and their hero, Sylvester’s son, Harry.  Joshing with each other, whilst ignoring the protestations of religious crusader, Susie Monican and the domestic violence going on upstairs, their life is worlds away from that to which the footballers will soon be returning.  For they are all too briefly on home leave and will soon return to the horrors of the trenches.  The raising of the victory cup, the silver tassie of the title, and Harry’s loving embrace with his sweetheart, Jessie Taite, will soon be a sweet memory.

And then we have Act Two where everything changes …. completely.  And cohesion is lost.  We are now in a bombed out monastery near the frontline and the realism of Act One has become total surrealism.  Whilst Vicki Mortimer’s visual transition from tenement to battlefield is superbly done, with the design a total onslaught on the senses, the introduction of biblical chanting, music hall rhythms and angry satire left me completely unimpressed.  The pyrotechnics amaze, the explosions startle but the whole scene left me curiously detached.

Acts Three and Four revert to naturalism with touches of black humour and unbearable sadness.  Harry Heegan is now wheelchair bound and has lost his girlfriend to Barney, his friend who won the VC for saving his life.  Bible basher, Susie Monican has become a nurse and falls for the amorous charms of a hospital surgeon, whilst Teddy Foran, the abusive husband is now blind and totally reliant on his previously abused wife.  A little touch of surrealism rears its head in the final few minutes of the play but this time to devastating effect.  The setting is an Armistice Day dance where the women are seen dancing.  But their partners aren’t the actual returning soldiers, but dummies depicting them.  For me the most moving part of the whole play and wonderfully realised by the director, Howard Davies.

Whilst The Silver Tassie disappoints, the performances do not.  Worth a particular mention are Ronan Raftery as Harry, Aidan McArdle and Stephen Kennedy as the two old buffers and Judith Roddy as bible basher turned flirty nurse. 

There is humour to be found during the 2 hours 20 minutes but the bleakness overrules and left me strangely unmoved.