MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
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A prophet, but not in his own land
JENNY FARRELL interviews Paul O’Brien, the first biographer to explore politically the extraordinary impact of Ireland’s greatest working-class playwright
Biographer Paul O’Brien; Playbill for O’Casey’s Spanish Civil War play The Star Turns Red, which is rarely performed in the UK or Ireland, but ran for 12 years at the Berliner Ensemble in the DDR
[Paul O’Brien]
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
JAN WOOLF relishes an extensive history of our long relationship to trees in Britain that underlines the current emergency
DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
PAUL O’BRIEN, the first Irish critic to publish a full-length political biography of Sean O’Casey from a left-wing perspective, talks to Jenny Farrell about some largely unknown aspects of the first proletarian dramatist of international significance writing in English.
Despite four major biographies in existence, O’Brien felt that “they offered no real examination explaining O’Casey’s development in terms of his political route from a young man involved with the Gaelic League and the IRB, and later the ICA, the socialist and then the communist movement. This background made O’Casey one of the most political writers of his generation.”
However, as O’Brien insists, while politics were central to O’Casey’s life, equally important was the artistic craft of writing drama. As a young man, he absorbed the works of Shakespeare and Boucicault. Alongside such significant influences as Jim Larkin and Charles Darwin, his fellow Dubliner Bernard Shaw made a lifelong impact: “Shaw transformed his view of drama and politics.”
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