To write a play that is lush, ripe and romantic and that doesn't make you giggle is one thing; to write a play that is lush, ripe, romantic and also about genocide is quite another. Helen Edmundson succeeds brilliantly in this drama set in Ireland during the 1650s, where Oliver Cromwell and his English administration are busy perfecting their own "final solution" to the troublesome Irish.
English gentleman Robert Preston, who inherited an Irish estate from his father, has fallen for and married Madeleine, a strong-willed young Irish woman. Her childhood friend Pierce is part of one of the guerrilla groups fighting the colonists. Robert and Madeleine are blissfully in love, and their happiness seems complete when Madeleine gives birth to a son.
Then their kindly neighbour Solomon discovers that, because he fought on the losing side in the civil war, he is to have his land and house confiscated, and be forcibly "transplanted" to famine-hit Connaught with his family. This sets off a train of events that test the loyalties of Robert and Madeleine to the limit.
This is a mighty play and also a popular one. It brings politics alive, making you understand why the wounds of almost 400 years ago are still so raw and fresh, and at the same time it sweeps you up in the narrative and carries you away.
Polly Teale's wonderfully cast, touchy-feely production is alert to every emotional nuance, every change of heart and mind in a play that shows as much compassion to the betrayers as the betrayed.
Edmundson's play was first produced at the Bush in the early 1990s, one skip ahead of events in the Balkans and the current tragedy of Palestine. It has at last found its time and deserves to find a home in the West End, not least because it is acted by a cast with the brakes full off and has an edge-of-the-seat quality that is in very short supply in the theatre.
We are often told that to understand the present we must remember our history. The Clearing suggests that sometimes it is better to forget - and that only in burying the past can we break the cycle of violence and make a future worth living.
