Borkman at BAM: Ireland's Abbey Theatre on centenary tour to US

Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman by the Abbey

When the Abbey Theatre first came to New York in November 1911, there were riots.

The tour included, among other works, J M Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, which had stirred controversy when it debuted in Dublin just a few years earlier. It was about to do the same here.

Protests were organized by Irish-American Catholic organizations, which resulted in eggs being pelted at the stage and even arrests. But Lady Gregory, one of the Abbey’s founders, had a plan. She was in the audience on the first night, and she got in touch with her good friend Theodore Roosevelt, the former President of the US, and implored him to come see the show.

Teddy Roosevelt

“And Teddy Roosevelt did come the second night,” explains Fiach MacConghaile, current director of the Abbey, “He was applauded on the way in.” The audience was much better behaved on the second night, and at the end of the performance the former president took to the stage. “He exalted and commended the Abbey for bringing Playboy of the Western World to America,” says MacConghaile.  

The controversy translated into full houses for the Abbey on their tour, which lasted six months and included 20 different plays. It counted among them works by WB Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, J.M Synge and others. As well as New York, the Abbey performed in Boston and Philadelphia and other centers like Scranton, Champagne, Illinois and Albany.

The tour was a success and helped foster an international reputation for Ireland’s fledging national theater. “It was an extraordinary moment in the history of the Abbey,” says MacConghaile, who explains that the Abbey was motivated to come to the US because it was running out of money. Annie Horniman, one of its founding patrons, withdrew her money after six years of support.

 “The Abbey had to look to America to survive because it had no funding from the State (state funding did not arrive until the 1920s),” says MacConghaile, “So it built a relationship with the diaspora and also with cities around America. To this day I can go to almost any city in the US, and when I mention the Abbey Theatre, they know it. It’s now part of the historical fabric of the relationship between Ireland and the US.”

One hundred years on, the Abbey is touring the US once more.

Lindsay Duncan

Its production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman, a new version by Frank McGuinness is currently playing at BAM Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn. The family drama, which revolves around a morally corrupt banker, stars three of the theatre world’s shining lights Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw and Lindsay Duncan. “It was well received in Dublin,” says Lindsay Duncan, who says it’s thrilling to be working with the Abbey for the first time. “It’s always exciting to take a production that has had a short run somewhere new. Hopefully, it’s grown. It’s not a particularly well-known Ibsen and perhaps even less well known here in the States.”

She acknowledges that having a jailed banker at the center of the plot is an interesting hook for an audience. “I don’t think it’s the main thing about it, but certainly because it’s about a banker who has behaved unwisely, it should have resonances here, as it did in Ireland. But of course its themes are much more universal than that, it’s about the human condition, and people and relationships.”

Bernie Madoff echoes

Executive producer at BAM, Joe Melillo says he was shocked when he saw the play in Dublin last year. “That doesn’t sound reasonable. But it was shocking to me that this play was calling on many of the implications of the Bernie Madoff scandal here,” he said. “It will absolutely compel New York audiences. They too will have a similar confrontation saying ‘oh my god, this play was written over 100 years ago?!”

BAM Harvey Theater

The play runs at BAM until February 6^th and it cements the close ties between the world famous Brooklyn Theater and the Abbey. In 1976, the Abbey brought The Plough and the Stars by Sean O’Casey to BAM, in what, at the time, was its first US tour in nearly four decades. Interestingly, John Kavanagh, who has a supporting role in John Gabriel Borkman, also starred in that production at BAM 35 years ago. The Abbey has been back to the USA at least six times since, including at BAM once more in 2002 with a production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw.

Joe Melillo says anyone in the theatre community understands the Abbey’s historic importance. “All of us who are theater students study global history and the Abbey’s place within Ireland and the global community,” he said. “What we understand is the great richness of Irish playwriting and the great reservoir of acting talent that is Irish actors.”

Centenary Tour

The Abbey’s centenary tour continues in February, with Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus embarking on a seven-week multi-venue tour that includes Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Ohio, Duke University, and Vermont. O’Rowe is one of an exciting new generation of playwrights emerging from Ireland right now. And if the Abbey’s mission 100 years ago was to build its reputation, make connections and raise money, then it’s aim in 2011 is not too different.

“It’s the same mission,” says Fiach MacConghaile, “To reconnect, build the networks, look for additional fundraising. There are two things the Abbey can do in the US. It can tell the good news story about Ireland. It can show off the best skills we have in terms of craftspeople, stage people, actors, writers – we can show off what Ireland’s good at. And what we need to do is build relationships in the US so that we can raise money for us to do our work back in Ireland.”

John Gabriel Borkman continues at BAM Theatre Brooklyn, until February 6

[This article originally appeared in the Irish Examiner USA on Jan 25 2011]