Drama From Dublin

Even the doorman of Dublin's Abbey Theatre is a product of the Irish Renaissance. He can and usually does recommend which copies of the Theatre's extensive repertoire you should buy from him to take home and read. On their second U. S. tour since 1914, which opened in Manhattan last week, the Abbey Theatre's Irish Players were not accompanied by their knowing doorman.

The Abbey Theatre was opened in 1904 by Miss Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman, onetime private secretary to Poet-Senator William Butler Yeats, for the Irish National Theatre Society. The organization was founded in 1899 through the efforts of Yeats, Lady Gregory and others, to make the world aware of a rebirth of Irish letters. The roster of playwrights who have worked and still work for the Theatre is a literary honor roll: Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, AE (George William Russell), Sean O'Casey, George Shiels, Lennox Robinson. And many an Irish Player has left home to make good in the U. S.: Arthur Sinclair, Dudley Digges, J. M. Kerrigan, Maire O'Neill.

On their U. S. tour last year the Irish Players, subsidized by the Free State, did not play Manhattan, confined themselves to the outlands where they performed before fraternal organizations, colleges, culture societies, once in a Masonic temple, once in a dining room. The players, none of whom has been with the organization less than five years, some of whom have been with it 25, took their trouping humorously, although most of them had never trouped farther away from home than Belfast or London before. This year the tour is to be made strictly "on the plush." Towns to be visited after their four-week stay in Manhattan: Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, Kansas City, St. Louis, Boston. Some of the Irish Players, like Eileen Crowe and Udolphus Wright, keep 300 parts fresh in mind. Last week's repertoire included:

The Tilings That Are Caesar's, by Paul Vincent Carroll (new). An overbearing mother and a sensitive, frail father fight to the death over the choice of a husband for their psychopathic daughter.

The Far Off Hills, by Lennox Robinson. Young Mariam finally finds life, her father's friends and her hustling suitor too jolly to give up for a convent.

Juno and the Paycock, by Sean O'Casey. A rich and rowdy tragic poem about an ironically conceived old wastrel who watches his family sink into want and despair with the ineffectual moan: "The world is in a state of chassis."

The New Gossoon, by George Shiels (new). A young rascal flies about the country on a motorcycle, drinks, bets on the dogs, chases after every petticoat he sees, is finally reformed by a shrewd colleen with more cunning than her elders.

The Playboy of the Western World, by John Millington Synge. Penny-plain fantasy about a son who boasted he had killed his old father, excited the admiration of his neighbors until he made good the boast.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.