The music of the lone voice on the Irish stage

IF YOU'RE a regular theatre-goer, you've almost certainly seen your fair share of monologue plays – work delivered either by one actor or by two or three in narratives that play off each other. This genre has become a regular feature of Irish stages, especially when new writing is showcased, writes CHRISTINE MADDEN

“There’s no denying that we now certainly have a tradition of the monologue play,” says Aideen Howard, the Abbey Theatre’s literary director, “even if it’s a recent one.”

This trend has not gone unnoticed abroad. “It’s definitely typical of Irish theatre, looking at it from the outside eye,” agrees Chris Campbell, literary manager at London’s Royal Court Theatre. “We expect Irish plays that arrive either to be entirely monologues or to consist of two or three parallel monologues.”

Why the particular interest in monologue theatre in Ireland? There’s no denying that cost can be a factor – it’s certainly less expensive to pay a salary to only one actor. Nevertheless, Howard notes, “we saw quite a lot of through the so-called good funding times as well”. And, as Campbell (who was born in Northern Ireland) observes, in English theatre financial constraints “tend to result in two-handed plays. Because I think there’s a feeling that, unless there’s dialogue in some sense, it’s not a play”.

So what other factors might explain the monologue’s popularity in Ireland’s theatre culture? One reason is that many of Ireland’s most powerful and successful plays in recent years have been monologues. And “when you have one or two great exponents in a form, they tend to inspire other people to follow”, says Campbell.

Monologue plays such as Brian Friel's Faith Healer, Gerard Mannix Flynn's James Xand Mark O'Rowe's Terminusare just a few of the many pieces that have inspired a generation of playwrights.

The monologue’s appeal might also have “to do with the positioning of theatre on the cultural map”, Campbell says. “In both Ireland and France, I think theatre fits closer to literature than it does on the English map. In England, theatre isn’t flat-sharing with literature in the way that it is in most other cultures. In a sense, the monologue is already halfway between a play and a poem, halfway between a play and a story.”

As a short narrative, the monologue can be seen as a natural expression of contemporary Irish culture. “John McGahern used to say that short stories were the chosen form for a nation that wasn’t yet fully evolved, and he thought that Irish writers were particularly drawn to the short-story form because it was so appropriate to their experience,” says Howard. “I think he felt that the short-story form was suited to taking on themes that were not so grand and epic as that, say, of the Russian novel. And that it was better able to deal with local and domestic experience.”

An underlying sense of Irish oral tradition also seems to haunt the monologue form. “Maybe it’s too easy,” Howard says, “but it’s tempting to say that the monologue play relates directly to an ancient tradition of storytelling in Ireland. And although many of our contemporary young writers wouldn’t have immediate access into that world, because of the tradition of other monologue plays that precede them, they do have an access into that.”

The monologue – either on its own or as part of several interwoven or duelling narratives – can express isolation like no other form. “Largely speaking,” Howard says, “the monologue stories are stories of loneliness and desolation, of the disconnect between desire and the actual facts. The monologue represents fracture – certainly, when you’re talking about a multiple-voice monologue play.”

“I do think there’s something about the lone voice,” Campbell muses. “I’d compare it to the fiddle. English social music is in communal hymn-singing and brass bands, things like that. Irish is solo voice, you think of the solo fiddle. And I think you can not too fancifully think of monologues as solo music, sonata music, that has its beauties, but we prefer a symphonic, orchestral sound in our theatre.”

Yet, within this loneliness, or perhaps because of it, “the single-voice monologue play can actually go after a kind of solidarity”, says Howard, “with one person telling a story, and the audience listening in sympathy.”

This sense of isolation can also reflect the writer's experience. "I can absolutely understand why newer playwrights write monologues," asserts Abbie Spallen, a recent winner of the Stewart Parker Trust award and author of, among other things, the acclaimed monologue play, Pumpgirl. "And I think we need to look at why those playwrights feel the need to write something so spare and sparse. Sometimes they feel that the support network might not be in place."

Writing a monologue is curiously similar to the experience of one. “When you write a monologue,” says Spallen, “you rely on yourself. You write the play and – even if it’s in a pub, even if it’s in a barn somewhere – you know you can always put on a three-hander monologue, with three players and a light. Yes, there are other forms, other ways to write plays, but this can be done with absolute simplicity, and it will showcase the work.”

The monologue form, however, may not find the same degree of understanding in other theatre cultures. The traditional dialogue play, explains Campbell, “allows space for interpretation. It allows you to pick up information, to follow stories and to make deductions about character. The writer gives you – the illusion, of course – the impression of being freer to wander around, to look at what you want to look at, to believe people or not to believe them. The characters are not telling me things; I’m watching them at work, and I’m drawing my own conclusions about them.

“When I read a good monologue, I do find myself thinking, ‘I wonder if this person could write a play’. And I wish they would.”