Mark O’Halloran says Shadow of a Gunman character is an echo of the author

Mark O’Halloran explains to Padraic Killeen how the central character of Davoren in The Shadow of a Gunman echoes O’Casey’s view of his younger self

Karl Marx’s dictum that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, was never lost on Irish playwright Sean O’Casey.

A committed socialist, O’Casey revelled in exposing what he regarded as a simultaneously tragic and farcical romanticism that undermined the spirit of revolution in Ireland. His famous Dublin trilogy (The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars) repeatedly expose this element of romantic escapism and, of the three plays, The Shadow of a Gunman is arguably the most pessimistic, in that it pitches Irish revolution itself as something on the very edge of farce.