Gender, Performance, and Authorship at the Abbey Theatre by Elizabeth Brewer Redwine (review)

Reviewed by: Gender, Performance, and Authorship at the Abbey Theatre by Elizabeth Brewer Redwine Richard Jones Gender, Performance, and Authorship at the Abbey Theatre. By Elizabeth Brewer Redwine. Oxford University Press, 2021. Hardcover $80. 238 pages. True to its title, Gender, Performance, and Authorship at the Abbey Theatre concentrates on a handful of women, mostly performers: Laura Armstrong, Maud Gonne, Molly Allgood (stage name Maire O’Neill), Sara Allgood—and to a somewhat lesser extent, Florence Farr, Florence Darragh, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Individually and in some cases collectively, these women had a profound influence on several of the foundational dramatic works of the 1890s and 1900s, including The Countess Cathleen, Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Playboy of the Western World, and both William Butler Yeats’s Deirdre and John Millington [End Page 83] Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows. Of course, the title is also a little misleading, in that more than a few pages are devoted to plays that predate the Abbey Theatre, or, in the case of the epilogue, to Sara Allgood’s career after she left. Redwine explains her project early on: “the role of female performance in the plays of the Abbey needs a reassessment to counter a historical bias towards male authorship at the expense of female performance” (xiv). Both criteria are important here, as Redwine concentrates attention specifically on female performers rather than on female playwrights, like Lady Augusta Gregory, whose contribution to the text of 1902’s Cathleen ni Houlihan was underestimated until well into the 1980s, or on, for example, the Fay brothers, who certainly had a significant impact on virtually anything staged at the Abbey prior to their departure in 1908. Following the introduction, the book proceeds essentially chronologically, opening with what is certainly one of the most interesting chapters, largely because much of it may come as entirely new information to many readers. This discussion concerns Laura Armstrong, for whom Yeats wrote his first plays, Vivien and Time, Time and the Witch Vivien, The Island of Statues, and Mosada, all of which were completed before The Land of Heart’s Desire or even the earliest versions of The Countess Cathleen. Armstrong was the first to occupy the muse role, which was later and more famously filled by Maud Gonne. Like Gonne, Redwine writes, Armstrong implicitly challenged gender expectations and “delighted in her roles of controlling actress and muse” (7). That Gonne was involved from the outset with both Cathleen plays, the subject of Chapter 2, will surprise few readers, but the extent of her influence, even on The Countess Cathleen, the title role of which she ultimately declined, has been hitherto underappreciated. Her famous performance as the “Poor Old Woman” in Cathleen ni Houlihan, striding through an audience fully aware of who she was, both as a celebrated beauty of only thirty-five years old and as a nationalist firebrand, took on iconic status. What becomes especially significant here in the context of this book is that subsequent actresses were inevitably compared to her; whereas it would be a stretch to afford her authorship status on this basis, her ownership of the role certainly granted her something akin to it. A similar phenomenon plays out with respect to Molly Allgood’s contributions to her fiancé Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and Deirdre of the Sorrows, the subjects of chapters 3 and 4. Synge’s letters to Allgood make it clear that he did not merely write Pegeen Mike and Deirdre with her in mind, he also relied on her actorly instincts throughout the writing and revision process. Allgood’s letters are lost or destroyed, so it is impossible to know whether a particular phrase came directly from her, but there seems to be reasonable certainty that some did. Redwine contends, for example, that many of Deirdre’s departures from conventional practice, especially with respect to the notions of nation and the body, are due to Allgood’s [End Page 84] influence. Certainly Allgood felt a level of ownership to the leading female roles in Synge’s two best-known full-length plays; whether this attitude extended to the plays themselves, as Redwine suggests, is more speculative but...