Moving-pictures in the hallway: dramatising the autobiographies of Seán O'Casey

Abstract

This article sets out the ways in which the autobiographies of Seán O'Casey have been adapted by dramatists. In recent years, autobiographical theory has complicated the notion that a straightforward ‘truth’ might be located in autobiographical writings, tempering the criticisms that have been launched at O'Casey since the 1960s, when critics highlighted the fact that his autobiographies lacked historical veracity. Researchers in drama and theatre have been particularly aware that, when examining the concept of the autobiographical in theatrical performance, a foregrounded process of mediation means that audiences scarcely expect to be presented with reality, but instead with the self-consciously representational. It is perhaps little surprise, then, that O'Casey's autobiographies have often enjoyed critical acclaim when presented in dramatic form, and this article discusses three such adaptations of O'Casey's prose work, highlighting the editorial decisions involved in creating each new version of O'Casey's texts. To begin with, Paul Shyre adapted the texts for audiences in New York from 1956, downplaying the sectarianism that had been a feature of the original prose writings. By contrast, from 1965 Dublin saw adaptations that were scripted collaboratively by David Krause and Patrick Funge, and which manifested a concern to expunge sexual rather than sectarian references. Finally those making the 1965 MGM film Young Cassidy tended to disregard some of the complex political contexts outlined by O'Casey in order to communicate a more straightforward rags-to-riches narrative. Even though the original autobiographies of O'Casey have fared relatively badly with publishers and critics since the 1960s, the writings have enjoyed an afterlife through these dramatic adaptations.

Keywords:

• Seán O'Casey
• autobiography
• adaptation
• Paul Shyre
• Lantern Theatre
• Young Cassidy

Notes

 1. Beckett, The Unnamable, 305.

 2. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 7.

 3. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 148. The cautionary quotation marks here are included by Williams in his original piece.

 4. Rice, ‘Some Day My Time Will Come’.

 5. ‘Label Withdraws McFadden's Video’.

 6. Byrne, ‘Rival Writers in Live TV Dust-up’.

 7. Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique, 22–3.

 8. Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography, 7.

 9. Barry, On Canaan's Side, 5–6.

10. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses, 8; Johnson, ‘My Monster/My Self’, 144–54.

11. Quoted by Holloway, Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre, 248.

12. O'Casey, The Letters of Sean O'Casey, 387.

13. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. II, 665.

14. O'Casey quoted in Kenneally, Portraying the Self, 1–2.

15. O'Casey, New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Seán O'Casey Papers, Holograph Notebook, vol. 9.

16. Quoted by Kenneally, Portraying the Self, 4, 8; Harris, Sean O'Casey's Letters and Autobiographies, 4.

17. Lejeune, ‘Autobiography in the Third Person’, 34.

18. Strawson, ‘Against Narrativity’, 433.

19. Harte, The Literature of the Irish in Britain, 188.

20. O'Casey, New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Seán O'Casey Papers, Holograph Notebook, vol. 21, f.18.

21. Butler, ‘The Makings of the Man’, 21.

22. Margulies, The Early Life of Sean O'Casey, 12.

23. Garry O'Connor, Sean O'Casey, 5.

24. Schrank, ‘The Politics of Irish Literary Autobiography’, 42–3.

25. Spivak, ‘Three Women's Texts and Circumfession’, 7.

26. O'Casey, New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Seán O'Casey Papers, Holograph Notebook, vol. 21, f.18.

27. Fraser, John Bull's Other Homes, 109.

28. Grace, ‘Performing the Auto/Biographical Pact’, 69. See also Grace and Wasserman, Theatre and AutoBiography.

29. Patrick O'Connor, ‘Theatre’.

30. National Library of Ireland, Seán O'Casey Papers, MS 38,079/1, Shyre letter of 15 September 1954.

31. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 8.

32. Shyre, I Knock at the Door, 8.

33. ‘Mr. O'Casey's Latest’, 6.

34. ‘Mr. O'Casey's Memoirs’, 4.

35. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 26.

36. Shyre, I Knock at the Door, 19.

37. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 26–7.

38. ‘Theatre: O'Casey Reading’, 27.

39. Dash, ‘I Knock at the Door’.

40. Shyre, Pictures in the Hallway, 14; O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 198.

41. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 204.

42. Watts, ‘Two on the Aisle’.

43. See, for example, Kerr, ‘Where O'Casey's Career Went Wrong’, D1.

44. Kerr, New York Herald Tribune, 16, quoted by Bladel, Walter Kerr, 171.

45. Kerr, ‘I Knock at the Door’.

46. National Library of Ireland, Seán O'Casey Papers, MS 38,079/1, Shyre's 1956 letters to O'Casey; Funke, ‘Theatre’, 23.

47. Shyre, Drums under the Windows.

48. Gussow, ‘Theater’, 50.

49. National Library of Ireland, Seán O'Casey Papers, MS 38,079/2, letters between Shyre and O'Casey.

50. ‘This Dublin Play Sets World Record’.

51. See National Library of Ireland, Lantern Theatre Papers, MS 40,206/22, unsigned letter from Patrick Funge to David Krause, 19 October 1965, and Krause's reply of 2 November. Eileen O'Casey also seems to have difficulties in distinguishing between the Shyre version and that of Funge and Krause: see National Library of Ireland, Lantern Theatre Papers, MS 40,206/28, Eileen O'Casey letter to Patrick Funge of 5 July 1967.

52. Patrick O'Connor, ‘Theatre’, 633.

53. MS 40,192/2, Pictures in the Hallway, Lantern Theatre collection, A Coffin Comes to Ireland, 2.

54. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 371–2.

55. In Shyre's version, almost at the very end of the text, the narrator describes how Johnny

pulled loose the bow-ends of the ribbons, opening her chemise halfway down so that her taut white breasts appeared bare before him; then he tugged at her chemise to raise it high on her legs, and she half rose to let him do it properly. Some hours afterward she was lying on the sofa. (Shyre, Pictures in the Hallway, 66)

56. National Library of Ireland, MS 40,192, Pictures in the Hallway production copy, Lantern Theatre Papers, I Strike a Blow for Ireland, 5. Quotations reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland and the O'Casey Estate.

57. O'Casey, Autobiographies, vol. I, 270.

58. Shyre had included, for example, the narrator's description of how Alice ‘brought her leg back beside the other one, and Johnny felt his hand being tightly pressed between her two thighs’ (Shyre, Pictures in the Hallway, 40–1).

59. National Library of Ireland, MS 40,192/2, Pictures in the Hallway production copy, Lantern Theatre Papers, Alice, Where Art Thou, 1–2. Quotations reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland and the O'Casey Estate.

60. National Library of Ireland, MS 34,905, Lantern Theatre Papers, f.76, J.J. Finegan, ‘The Story of Sean O'Casey’, Evening Herald.

61. O'Casey, The Letters of Sean O'Casey, vol. IV, 113, 22.

62. Murray, Sean O'Casey, 341.

63. O'Casey, New York Public Library, O'Casey Papers, +70B6521, The National Broadcasting Company presents A Conversation with Sean O'Casey and Robert Emmett Ginna (1955), ff.4, 5, 16.

64. Murray, Sean O'Casey, 425–6.

65. Levy, John Ford, 196.

66. ‘Fire Brings More Trouble to the Filming of “Young Cassidy”’, 1; Quidnunc, ‘An Irishman's Diary’, Irish Times, 21 July 1964, 8; Quidnunc, ‘An Irishman's Diary’, Irish Times, 4 August 1964, 7.

67. In fact, the producers had initially wanted Sean Connery (then famous as James Bond) to play the part, and as a result Rod Taylor's Cassidy does retain a kind of Bondish irresistibility to women – including even to Lady Gregory, who in the film calls Cassidy ‘handsome’ and asks about his love life. Archer, ‘Ford Will Film Life of O'Casey’, 36.

68. Other taglines used on posters advertising the film included, ‘Brawling, battling, earthy… That's Young Cassidy – taking on the world with two fists clenched and every male sense soaring!’, and ‘He's a brawling, sprawling giant – on the make for fame and fortune and then some.’ The posters also make great use of the image of Rod Taylor's torso and Julie Christie's cleavage.

69. Frazier, Hollywood Irish, 212, 224.

70. Quidnunc, ‘An Irishman's Diary’, Irish Times, 26 February 1965, 7.

71. Quoted by Lowery, ‘Introduction’, xi–xviii (xi).

72. This two-volume work appeared from Macmillan in the UK in 1980–81, and from Carroll and Graff in New York in 1984. In the UK Macmillan published a Pan version of the six individual volumes in 1971. Macmillan also published a collected Papermac edition in 1992.

73. Outside the anglophone world, the German translation published by Diogenes Verlag proved the most enduring: after initially appearing between 1957 and 1963, a six-part translation was reproduced later in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and the first part (Ich klopfe an: Autobiographie) was reissued again in 2008, at a time when no version of the English original remained in print.

74. Prince, Grandchild of Kings, 114–15.

75. Rich, ‘Evoking the Youth of Sean O'Casey in Dublin’, C16.

76. Simon, ‘Pipsqueak's Progress, Playwright's Regress’, 76–7.

77. National Library of Ireland, Seán O'Casey Papers, MS 37,889/10, Sean O'Casey to Jane Rubin, 1 September 1961.

78. Hetrick, ‘Tony Winner Shyre's I Knock at the Door & Pictures in the Hallway Begin NY Run Nov 24’.