Keane’s truthful, blackly funny, cathartic legacy
His dual role as pub-owner and playwright allowed him access to different levels of society and would ultimately lead to his becoming the great playwright of the Irish people, expressing the zeitgeist of 20th century rural Ireland through plays that were clever, humane and often uncomfortably honest.
But let’s begin in the early days of Keane’s writing career, at a time when he stole precious hours after closing time in his Listowel pub in which to stitch his impressions of the humour and petty cruelties of the locals into his first plays. Sive, written in 1958, was rejected by the Abbey’s artistic director Ernest Blythe — who later said of Sharon’s Grave, that it was “too grotesque for words”. However, with the encouragement of Michéal Ó hAodha, Sive was performed by the Listowel Drama Group and won the All-Ireland Prize at the Athlone Festival. Noting the play’s success, Blythe invited the Listowel Drama Group to perform it for the Abbey at its temporary home in the Queen’s Theatre. It ran for a week in 1959 to packed houses. The Irish artistic community began to take notice of the Kerry playwright whose work struck such a chord with audiences throughout the country. This production of Sive was the first time an amateur company had been invited to perform on the Abbey stage. An interesting journey had begun. It strikes me now how fitting it is to be writing this so soon after the 2012 All-Ireland Drama Festival, knowing that the Abbey’s relationship with amateur dramatics had such an auspicious beginning.
