Journal Article

Outside Mullingar, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and The Night Alive

Watt, Stephen

2016

Overview

Critical responses to two plays—John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar and Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive—during the 2013-14 New York theatre season evoked the long tradition of Irish drama performed on and off- Broadway. Not surprisingly, reviewers of these productions found touchstones of relevance in describing the attractions of these plays for their readers, Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten being one of them. But the concept of an “Irish play” is hardly univocal or even stable, as the history of Irish drama on the American stage for over 150 years demonstrates. This essay plots points of contact between Shanley’s and McPherson’s plays and this tradition, stopping for concerted discussions of nineteenth-century melodrama, and a tradition of modern drama in which O’Neill figures largely. One result of this process is an expanded notion of Irish drama, which includes both rural and urban components as exhibited by both Outside Mullingar and The Night Alive. (SW)

• Publisher: Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences, University of Debrecen,Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of Cebrecen CAHS
• Subject: 19th century / American literature / British & Irish literature / Drama / Dramatists / Famine / Friel, Brian / Immigrants / Irish literature / Joyce, James (1882-1941) / Shanley, John Patrick / Theater / Theater history / Traditions