The cultural nationalism of the old Field Day group - Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Seamus Deane and, until he baled out a decade ago, playwright Brian Friel - reached its apogee in Friel's raw, humanistic treatments of the legacies of colonisation. Making History fans the embers of late-16th-century Ulster history, and the enigmatic figure of clan chieftain Hugh O'Neill, routed at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 - a defining moment in the demise of old Gaelic culture.
Friel examines the brutal pragmatism of Empire from the standpoint of an imagined, modernised O'Neill. An adept politician, soldier and native aristocrat, O'Neill was ennobled as Earl of Tyrone under Elizabeth I. But as a result of his open revolt in 1595, Elizabeth crushed Ulster with massacre and famine.
Friel's O'Neill is both romantic and flawed: a slippery, magisterial rogue who commands loyalty from his English secretary Harry, his hot-headed fellow-chieftain Hugh O'Donnell and his young wife, Mabel.
Directed by Brian Brady, the urgency of this production rests squarely on four of the cast. As O'Neill, Gerry McSorley has an ability to render the most page-bound passages as pure and moving. Just as vivid are Keith McErlean's volatile O'Donnell; Chris McHallem's alert Harry; and Catherine Mack's magnetic Mabel.
The play may seem academic and didactic to some, but if you are at all engaged with the tragedy of Ulster, it's a gripping, heart-felt and highly courageous piece.
After premiering in Derry with Field Day, it played at the National in 1988. But perhaps, in the wake of the movie Elizabeth, it should be re-aired at the Royal Court. However, I would respectfully suggest, a trimming of the long final scene, which dissipates the fire of the play as it bludgeons home the point that, in war, politics and indeed history, truth is often the first casualty.
Till August 7. Booking: 00 353 1 878 7222.
