'There were several moments when I was afraid I would have to walk out'

‘Christ Deliver Us!’, Thomas Kilroy’s new play at the Abbey, has moved audiences to tears with its themes of Catholicism, repression and sexuality in 1950s Ireland. Four people for whom the themes have a particular resonance give their reactions

THOMAS KILROY'S play Christ Deliver Us!opened at the Abbey Theatre last month. Since then, some audience members have left the theatre in tears, while some others have felt fearful of attending at all, such is the power of the play's themes.

Seventy-five year old Kilroy, whose work was first seen at the Peacock in 1969, has based the play on Wedekind's Spring Awakening. The play is set in 1950s rural Ireland, among teenage boys and girls coming of age in a time of sexual and religious oppression. Priests and parents are against the emotional, intellectual and sexual freedom the teenagers crave, with tragic results.

Michael, the “posh” boy, is an atheist. His girlfriend, Winnie, is a widow’s youngest child who is curious about sexuality. Mossie, Michael’s best friend, is a boy driven to suicide by repressed sexuality, parental abuse and guilt.

The play’s themes include the power of the Catholic Church; the physical and mental abuse meted out by parents, priests and brothers; the confusion of some priests within that culture; the hypocrisy and repression of church and lay people alike; and the ultimate price of shame: death.

In order to test the relevance of the play to society today, we brought four people – each with a personal interest in the themes involved – to see the play.

BREDA O’BRIEN

COLUMNIST WITH ‘THE IRISH TIMES’, SECONDARY-SCHOOL TEACHER AND CATHOLIC

“I had a huge problem with the portrayal of women. Women were either virgins, raped of course, or whores. The play didn’t affect me emotionally, though I’m feeling a bit frustrated. There were brutal parents, a rape, a suicide and even a circle jerk-off, an industrial school, brutal priests and the threat of nuns. There was so much happening – unrelenting darkness. I wasn’t there in the 1950s, and while I know there was a lot of darkness then, I can’t believe it was that unrelenting.”

The play is partly set in a Christian Brothers school in rural Ireland, where the boys, as well as being drilled in religion and repression, are taught to ballroom dance – with one another.

Breda’s favourite scene was when two boys dance together, showing that they are in love. “It was a lovely moment of grace. The choreography and the staging were creative.

“It’s a play I came to wanting to like, and I couldn’t. There were so many aspects of it verging on cliche. As a devout Catholic, after the Murphy and the Ryan reports, it’s a hard time to be a believer, and I was hoping for something that would give the light and the shade. Instead it turned into a polemic on atheism as the only valid view, and when drama becomes a polemic it often loses its ability to move or touch you on a deep level.

“There were aspects that rang true – the lack of sex education, for example – but I don’t think a mother would send a child to a priest when her child comes to her saying she’s had her first period.

“The portrayal of shame and fear was the best thing about the play, but that is not unique to Ireland in the 1950s. For kids today, there is still a huge amount of shame, and the pervasive feeling that something is wrong with you if you don’t conform – it’s just that the shame has shifted.”

In the 1950s, it was the fear of being seen as a “slut”, whereas in today’s culture it’s the fear of not fitting into the “Barbie doll” stereotype of sexual attractiveness, she thinks. “Girls today think there’s something wrong with you if you are not hot or size eight or if you’re too smart.

“It’s a different shame, but the impact is equally devastating. There’s still conformity, it’s just different. In the 1950s you had to conform to religion, and now you can’t be seen as having allegiance to religion. The elite believe we should have left that all behind, but that’s still conformity. I would like to see [a playwright] explore that.

“A really courageous thing would be to look at Irish society today – where are the cesspits today? How are we forcing people to conform today? It’s so easy to look back 50 years and see everything as bleak. I do think that Ireland today is a more open society than the 1950s, and I sure as hell would not like to have lived then . . . It’s much harder and requires more courage to look at society today, because we are blind to the oppression that exists now as much as people were in the 1950s to what was going on then.”

ANDREW MADDEN

AUTHOR OF THE MEMOIR ‘ALTAR BOY: A STORY OF LIFE AFTER ABUSE’. HIS ABUSE HAPPENED IN THE 1970S

“I really liked it, though the play brought up fresh anger that I had felt in response to the Murphy and Ryan reports. I was conscious of the frequency with which people were physically violent to one another, and there was a lot of reference to the fear of being beaten by parents, by the Brothers and by each other.

“It wasn’t believable that a mother would send her daughter to a priest when she had her first period, but I saw that it was representative of an attitude and environment where people unquestioningly followed the Catholic Church.

“In the two main characters – Michael and Winnie – there was a desire to go another way. Michael [a teenage boy] was very confident, imagining an ideal life modelled on ancient Greek philosophy, while Winnie [a teenage girl] was questioning, and wanted to know everything, yet both of them were surrounded by negativity and deference to the church. I was disappointed that Michael raped Winnie. Before that I really liked his character.

“The gay scene was so tender – to see two boys dancing compared to all the violence around them. It was the only genuine expression of love in the play.”

He thought the characterisation of women was limited. “It was very obvious it was written by a man. The women were all victims – receptors of sexuality rather than expressing their own sexual identity. In the scene of quasi-rape, Winnie expresses no identity. Michael tells her to lie down and take it and she does. It made no sense. You could see she was trapped by being unable to express her sexuality in that moment, but it didn’t ring true that she would just lie down and take it, in contrast to the male sexuality that was shown. The men were able to express to each other their sexuality and could discuss it.”

ALAN BOLGER

BORN IN A ‘MOTHER AND BABY HOME’ AND WAS GIVEN UP FOR ADOPTION

Bolger was especially moved by the character of Winnie, a 15-year-old girl who has never been told the facts about sexual intercourse, even when she has repeatedly asked, and who is told, when she discovers she is pregnant, that money has taken care of the problem and that she will be going to the nuns.

“It was very upsetting, but I’ve gone through the process of my birth mother explaining to me. Seeing it on stage was still upsetting, especially the lack of empathy for Winnie from her family. Winnie is told of her impending stay with the nuns, and that it is all arranged, but Winnie is none the wiser about what’s going on.

“I was thinking of my own birth mother, who was in that situation. If I had not already dealt with that, it would have affected me even more. Seeing it played out on the stage from the perspective of the mother was interesting. There was the stigma – the girl who got pregnant out of wedlock and would have to carry that label with her forever.

“I loved the dance between the two gay boys. I could not help but feel the caring and tenderness between the two boys in contrast with the relationship between Michael and Winnie. The way the two boys danced was the only moment of loving and intimacy in the play . . . The play needed more gay dancing!

“I found the first half of the play very good, but in the second half it was very cliched – we’ve seen it all before. The main character Michael was almost punished for having an atheist view and I found that very disappointing. In the final scene, the main character of Michael was being told at the point of death to trust your body and follow the light, but it was a cliche – follow the light – as well as contradictory. I thought the last 10 minutes of the play were farce, like a tacked-on speech with no release.”

FR PETER McCARRON

PARISH PRIEST IN RIVER VALLEY, SWORDS, CO DUBLIN

“There were several moments when I was afraid I would have to walk out. I was afraid that there would be sexual abuse and I couldn’t have taken that if it was going to happen. I wouldn’t have walked out in protest – it was just that the memories it aroused were painful.”

Fr McCarron was born in 1950, and was the victim of corporal punishment while in primary school at Willow Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin.

“I’m glad that we’re here together talking about the play immediately afterwards, because if I just went home on my own I would not have been able to sleep. I feel a bit shook – a couple of times I felt I’d have to get up and leave. I felt a child again watching the play. In the scene where the boys were being slapped by the brother with a leather, I had to look away. I had a very tough time in school and it still brings up the heebie-jeebies.”

When Fr McCarron was a child, the school dean would usually come in five minutes before the end of class to ask the teacher how the pupils were getting on. If you hadn’t done your work in time, you were put “into the line”. The dean would come along and beat each boy in line with a leather – “it felt like an iron bar”. The anxiety of anticipation in waiting for the dean to arrive at the end of each class was as torturous as the physical punishment, he says.

“There was a lot of anger, a lot of fear and a lot of frustration in the play – the way the characters were trying to understand their sexuality and the truth of things, and the sheer human confusion that I saw in the parents and the brothers. Some of the brothers were like pokers – not in touch with their humanity – and Michael’s father was so rigid, not in touch with his feelings at all.”

In Fr McCarron’s own childhood, there were “one or two priests and brothers with humanity who would do anything for you”. He feels this was personified in actor Tom Hickey’s character Stutters, an elderly priest who was on the boys’ side.

“I would like to think I’m a very different kind of priest to those portrayed, in the sense of being loving and compassionate and caring and non-judgmental, no matter what situation people are in.”

His only criticism of the play was that “it was very dark – 99 per cent dark. Growing up in the 1950s I experienced a lot of that, but there were happy times as well – and that did not come across. The play needed more balance.”

Christ Deliver Us!is at the Abbey until March 13