The Horror of Selling a Girl

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DESPITE their unforgivable neglect by the Irish theatrical establishment, the plays of John B. Keane have thrived on Irish stages for almost 50 years.

Repeatedly dismissed by the critics as overcooked melodramas, or rejected outright for their often overtly religious content, they have still managed to carve out a place in the Irish collective consciousness. Works like Sive, The Field, Big Maggie and The Year of the Hiker are as well known and enduring today as the most beloved rebel ballads.

Sive, which opened the Irish Repertory Theatre's new season last week, is a perfect example of both the strengths and weaknesses of Keane's playwriting. His first produced play, originally staged in 1959, Sive is the thoroughly atavistic tale of a tragic conflict between the generations that is as familiar in its own way as a work by Sophocles.

In language as rich as a French casserole, Keane introduces us to his young heroine, a woman who is being forced into a marriage against her will. The match, we learn, will line the pockets of the matchmakers, and if it breaks the young girl's heart they are unconcerned.

In the role of Mena, Sive's malevolent guardian, Fiana Toibin crackles with almost electrical intensity as the embodiment of human wickedness wrapped up in a veneer of righteousness. Toibin's performance is quietly exhilarating, as she senses an opportunity to rid herself of the two women whose presence is affront to her advancing age and her childless marriage to her well meaning but feckless husband Mike.

The struggle between these three women - the maiden, the would be mother and the old crone - is as elemental and mythic as a Greek tragedy or a medieval folk tale, which explains its enduring power. Keane had a genius for observing and enacting the generational struggles of the Irish in his works, and in this play he gives full rein to that considerable awareness.

In the playbill, director Ciaran O'Reilly notes that Keane's rural territory has been traversed by more recent playwrights like Martin McDonagh, but the latter's call and response pantomimes are no match for Keane's folk tales.

Watching adults speculate and strategize how best to offload an unwanted child onto an undeserving suitor is, as it should be, a horror show. Mena and her cohort, the half-vagrant town matchmaker Thomasheen, plot and cackle at their own ingenuity without a moment's thought for the young life they're sacrificing.

In the latter role Patrick Fitzgerald gives vent to a cold-hearted Machiavellian nature that has no time for love or other "high notions." For Mena and Thomasheen, the long struggle to live in an impoverished rural town has divested them both of all pretence at civility; they simply want the suitor's money for the human goods they're trafficking. Mena is so manipulative and effective at it that she almost convinces herself that she's acting in the best interests of her ward.

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