Richard II’s history lesson for Ireland

Patrick Moy in the title role of Richard II.

Shakespeare’s play was last produced in Ireland in 1951.

One of the country’s most accomplished actors, Denis Conway, is artistic director of the ambitious theatre company, Ouroboros. Their revival of Shakespeare’s Richard III was a success some years ago.

Now, Conway and his Ouroboros partner, director Michael Barker-Caven, are returning to Shakespeare with the seldom-produced play Richard II. It is running at the Peacock, in Dublin, before it travels to the Everyman Palace, in Cork, in early May.

This is the first in a series of Shakespeare’s history plays that Ouroboros hope to mount between now and 2016. They are rooting the plays in an Irish context, and making a claim on Shakespeare that Irish theatre has notoriously avoided.

“The history plays are never done here,” says Conway. “Henry IV, Parts I and II are on the Junior Cert, so they tend to be done the odd time. But Richard II is never done. In fact, the last time it was done was in the Gate Theatre in 1951. Henry V is never done, and for obvious reasons, because it’s all about the glorification of England, if you read it on only one level. Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, is more of that, and then there’s Richard III. When Ouroboros did Richard III, with me playing Richard, 13 years ago, it was the first time the play had been done professionally in Ireland since 1935. And that’s one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays.

“And why haven’t they been done? Because the history plays are — on one reading — about England. But I think, now, that after the peace process, after the Queen’s visit, and all of that business, we need to grow up. Shakespeare was an artist. He wasn’t an historian.”

The Cork actor says that if Irish audiences can rise above the bitterness of old divisions between Ireland and England, then Shakespeare’s beautifully composed history plays needn’t be regarded as about England. They can shine a penetrating light on the political malaise that has beset Ireland for so many decades.

“Richard II examines how power is gained and how it is lost,” says Conway. “And it asks ‘is the person who gains power any better than the guy who preceded him, or is he possibly even worse’? In our production of Richard II, you could absolutely be talking about Ireland, so that instead of a king you would have a president or a Taoiseach — somebody with power and rights. And the play asks ‘if you abuse those rights, what happens’?”

Conway, who plays the Duke of York, says the new production will have many resonances for an Irish audience.

“The history plays, from Richard II through the Henry plays to Richard III, are set over a 100-year period,” he says. “So what we’ve done with Richard II is we’ve made it about the last 100 years of Irish history.

“There are shades of the War of Independence there, and shades of the Civil War, and then there’s the sad progression to what’s happened in our country over the past ten years, where we arrive at a period where we’re arguably less independent than we were 100 years ago.

“So you’re going from Michael Collins to Bertie Ahern and going ‘Jesus, is that where we’ve come to’?”

*Richard II runs at the Peacock until May 4 and at the Everyman Palace, Cork, May 7-11