A shorter, edited version of this article appears in the current edition (Spring 2024) of the Irish Arts Review.
It seemed particularly apt when Interviewing Mick O’Dea for this article that our meeting took place in his Dublin studio on Henrietta Street. This wide, cobbled street, leading up to the Kings Inns’ archway, is the first of the great Georgian building projects to adorn our capitol. It went from being home to aristocrats in the 18th Century to infested tenements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with up to 100 people sharing one house. This was the environment in which Sean O’Casey grew up (in nearby Mountjoy Square) and buildings such as this formed the backdrop to his great trilogy: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, and The Plough and the Stars. Walking up the original stairs with its time-polished banisters, O’Dea pointed out a series of metal clamps at intervals along the rail, designed apparently to thwart those wayward lads of yore who might attempt the deliciously lengthy slide. An early painting from his current Druid series shows The Young Covey from The Plough and the Stars (played by Marty Rea) looking back up these very stairs. A creative and leap by O’Dea as he’s brought the actor from the Druid stage to his own studio. O’Dea was equivocal about including this resonant work in the upcoming show as the scale of the figure is unrepresentative of what he’s aiming for and it doesn’t portray the back stage action that’s his main concern. On the way up to his second flor studio we pass the locked-up studio of the late and much lamented Mick Cullen, and next door was Charlie Cullen’s studio. Fergus Martin’s space was further up on the top floor. All these artists benefited from the ongoing generosity of the MacEoin family who let the spaces at peppercorn rents. Given the sturdy and impeccable Republican roots of that family they would surely approve of O’Dea’s current engagement with O’Casey’s plays. We sat in O’Dea’s chilly studio crammed with paintings, drawings, and a profusion of books and catalogues. In the corner was a typical minimalist Charlie Brady painting of an envelope. O’Dea remembers how helpful Brady was to him as a young aspiring artist - opening doors for him on a visit to New York.
We were meeting to discuss his exhibition What is the Stars? at the Molesworth Gallery, inspired by Garry Hynes’s epic production DruidO’Casey. The title of O’Dea’s show is Captain Boyle’s metaphysical plaint from Juno and the Paycock (echoed by his drinking buddy Joxer). DruidO’Casey involved the consecutive staging of the three great O’Casey plays on the same day. It premiered at the 2023 Galway International Arts Festival and also enjoyed runs in Dublin, London and New York – where it was described by the New Yorker as “the season’s most exciting international visit.” The genesis of O’Dea’s exhibition was a phone call from Hynes asking him if he would like to be artist-in-residence for DruidO’Casey and document visually the preparation and staging of O’Casey’s masterpieces. O’Dea’s painting Attention had been used in the promotional material for the show and Hynes had been impressed by his recent exhibitions commemorating 1916, the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War. In particular she was taken by his capturing of the period detail, the colour of the uniforms and the self-consciously stagey way many of the protagonists posed for the photographs on which the exhibitions were based. O’Dea saw them as the rock stars and boy bands of that era - with Lee Enfield rifles replacing Fender Stratocasters. Hynes had bought one of these paintings for her own collection (a depiction of one of the infamous Black-and-Tans curiously). “It acts as a sentinel as you walk in the door of her house” he reports. Hynes felt that O’Dea was the right man to do justice to her drama set in the same period.
Over a period of 3 or 4 months in the summer of 2023, O’Dea embedded himself within the Druid company as they went about their elaborate preparations for the mighty enterprise. Most of the activity took place in rooms at the Digital Hub in Thomas Street, Dublin. In addition to sitting in on rehearsals and ultimately viewing live performances in Galway, O’Dea observed the multifarious creative and backstage activities that staging a play entails. While viewing the dress rehearsals in Galway, O’Dea was delighted to be joined by his old friend Brian Bourke in sketching the action on stage. Bourke had a tradition of making drawings of Druid productions and asked O’Dea if he could sit in for a few days. “You the maestro” was the generous response. “It was nice to catch up with Brian” O’Dea remarked and he commented on how fit and flamboyant (scarves, hats and fancy shoes) the older artist remains.
O’Dea spent time with the set designers, the musical director, the dance coordinators, the sound engineers and the wardrobe people. While not directly responsible for the latter activity, he was able to offer Francis O’Connor and her team advice and suggestions concerning the dress and uniforms of the period. “It was superficial help” he concedes modestly. “I was familiar with military uniforms. I could be useful with the particular shade of bottle green used by the RIC for example”. O’Dea has had a lifelong weakness for men in uniform and refers more than once to a box of lead toy soldiers from his childhood stored on a high shelf in the studio. (Coming from a military background myself, I was tempted to ask him to get them down to play but my fatal sense of propriety kicked in.) Like these toy soldiers his aim in the exhibition was to reduce in scale the actors in the O’Casey plays to reflect the relative puniness of their presence on the giant stage in which they operated: to emphasise the staginess and artifice rather than go for a realist depiction of the action. “I need to have the figures diminished by the scale of the arena – elements in a bigger composite.”
There is a history of artists engaging with the theatre: Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec spring immediately to mind and Walter Sickert in London. In Ireland Jack B. Yeats didn’t just depict the theatre in his paintings but also wrote plays and was involved in stage design. Louis le Brocquy also got involved in stage design, I remember that significant tree on the Gate stage for Waiting for Godot in 2003. However, these artists were mostly involved in set design or in depicting the audience or the actors on stage. O’Dea’s is a different take. He sees Edward Hopper as the nearest parallel with his cinema usherettes – a focus on the attendant elements. I like the parallel with another epic enterprise with which an Irish artist engaged – Sean Keating’s series of paintings of the development stages of the giant hydro-electric scheme at Ardnacrusha. When I mentioned this fanciful connection, O’Dea gleefully pointed out that Keating hadn’t been paid for his enterprise, whereas his own efforts were sponsored by An Post.
As well as serving as a record of a great artistic enterprise the paintings must succeed in their own right by having the impact and radiance of art. Ou find this in the expectancy and energy in Up Above for example which shows a character at the floor of a staircase not unlike the one in Henrietta Street. I thought it could be Joxer looking up to see if Captain Boyle is emerging to join him in a visit to the pub, or maybe Fluther seeking help to loot a bombed pub. It’s actually Marty Rea as The Young Covey, presumable engaged in more serious business. You see it also in the piquant juxtaposing of the O’Casey character in the wings and the stagehand on stage in Stagehand and Irregular.
A number of the paintings were built around dress rehearsals, with characters in costume waiting to go on – the period costumes often clashing anachronistically with modern Exit signs or backstage paraphernalia. In Mollser we see Tara Cush as O’Casey’s tragic consumptive from The Plough and the Stars during dress rehearsals – she sits amidst ladders and technicians back stage as she awaits her cue. She looks nervous but perhaps her stricken look is her getting into character as the misfortunate girl. In Captain Boyle we see Rory Nolan as the feckless husband in Juno and the Paycock getting in the mood for his entrance in full 20s period costume while standing beside a palpably modern door. The artifice exposed. In similar vein Rosie and the Barman depicts a scene from a dress rehearsal of The Plough and the Stars - rear views of Anna Healy and Sean Kearns below an array of lights. In the Wings exposes the anachronism of a modern blue plastic bag. Back Stage reveals the relative chaos and disorder behind he scenes as the carefully ordered and choreographed action takes place out front. The ominous cowled figure in the doorway seems a portent of doom – apt for the times that O’Casey was writing about in his trilogy.
DruidO’Casey was arguably the most significant cultural event in this country in 2023. O’Dea’s dense, and evocative exhibition provides a permanent record of its genesis - of the physical toil and creative energy that went into the great project. The playwright Denis Johnston famously said of the 1916 rising that “the birth of a nation is never an immaculate conception”. What is the Stars is O’Dea’s visual equivalent of that comment in relation to Hynes’ revolutionary production.
John P. O’Sullivan
March 2024
