Tomβs Mac Anna's Fallaing Aonghusa is that rarest of birds in Irish literature - a memoir of a life spent in the theatre. Mac Anna, a producer for the Abbey for most of his career, has taken the opportunity to look back on the highs and lows of his adventures in the Abbey. The reader is taken on a casual trip down memory lane, one which does not demand too much effort and yet one which gives much pleasure.
I don't think I'm insulting the author if I suggest there is a hint of the anti-intellectual in his writing. In one telling anecdote he recounts the Abbey's managing director, Ernest Blythe (or Earnβn de Blaghd as he is here), venting his impatience with those who washed up in the Abbey and decried it as having lost direction after Yeats. Blythe had and Mac Anna has, thankfully, a much more democratic feel for the business of theatre - it's there to entertain. There, I've said it, bums on seats - be they Dublin 4 bums or Irish-speaking bums - are the bottom (boom, boom) line.
Which is not to suggest that Mac Anna and his contemporaries were engaged in some sort of tabloid theatre which catered to the lowest common denominator. The passion with which he recounts designing sets, costumes and arranging lighting, gives the lie to any such notion. Throughout this memoir, we see a man who cared deeply about his art and the magic of a good production. Indeed, if one were to take a simple lesson from Fallaing Aonghusa, it is this: audiences deserve the highest standards in all aspects of a production, from writing, to staging, to acting. Anything less, is to patronise and indeed insult the intelligence of the theatre-goer.
It was fortuitous that the boy from Dundalk found his way into theatre in 1947. His new career allowed him to escape from his duties as a customs officer. By his own admission, he was more interested in writing and reviewing plays than chasing down Border smugglers. A letter from Blythe invited him to an interview and Mac Anna found himself, eventually, producing plays by Yeats, Synge, Behan, Friel and Lorca, as well as works in Irish, in a long and distinguished career.
He and Blythe had their run-ins. Certainly, Mac Anna does not paint Blythe as the ogre which some held him to be. The writer, Seosamh Mac Grianna, once attacked Blythe as being "thick in the head" for setting up the state-publishing company, An Gum, in 1926, an organisation which set itself the task of translating contemporary works of literature into Irish. Blythe, for Mac Anna, was anything but thick, and, while there were rows and sulks, they never became vendettas.
Mac Anna holds his mentor and the Abbey in fond remembrance. He gives us just enough internal politics to make it interesting but not too much to bore. Similarly, names are dropped (an essential element in any memoir) but not so much as to become gushy.
Rightly, Mac Anna has a few harsh words to say about the Abbey's policy (or lack of it) with regard to the Irish language. There has been little of worth from that quarter in a number of years. What a pity though that he has little to say about contemporary Irish-language theatre. Given his experience, a chapter or two on that subject would have made for interesting reading.
Or should I say further interesting reading?
P≤l ╙ Muir∅ is Irish Language Editor of The Irish Times