Reviews

Theatre - The Colleen Bawn

Dion Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn is one of those epic works of the 19th century that demands a certain chutzpah of any modern company that wishes to stage it. Druid are well up to the challenge. Under Garry Hynes’ direction, the company play it for laughs, revelling in the absurd plot turns and heightened language that are both hallmarks of the Boucicault oeuvre.

At the heart of the drama is Hardress Cregan’s dilemma: he must wed his cousin Anne Chute if he is to save the family estate in Co Kerry, but he is already secretly married to the local beauty Eily O’Connor, the Colleen Bawn of the title. Marty Rea plays Hardness as a slightly ineffectual if well-meaning son of privilege, while Aaron Monaghan plays his boatman, the cripple Danny Mann, as a misguided schemer. It is Danny who hatches the plan to solve Hardress’s dilemma by disposing of the Colleen Bawn.