An open national identity: Rutherford Mayne, Gerald MacNamara, and the plays of the Ulster Literary Theatre

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2004 by Karen Vandevelde

In this context, did the humor of Suzanne and the Sovereigns have a cathartic effect, or was the satire so "light" as to preclude serious political engagement? To some extent, the play did raise an awareness of the way in which cultural identities become stereotypes, but the reviews illustrate that Suzanne did not have the effect one could expect from good satire. The play did not make the audience, nor the critics, "think." Take, for example, the following quotation from the Northern Whig. On the day after its favorable review of Suzanne and the Sovereigns in November 1910, in which the reviewer noted that "those who do not laugh from curtain to curtain are not to be congratulated on their sense of humour," (47) the paper published a bleak anti-Home Rule editorial:

   Abundant and gratifying are the indications that, by the spirit in
   which [the Ulster men] have withstood all the attempts that have
   been made to deprive them of their birthright as citizens of the
   Empire, and to subject them to a regime under which their civil and
   religions liberties would be extinguished, the Unionists of Ulster
   and of Ireland are animated no less resolutely than of old, and that,
   upheld by glorious memories of sacrifice, and struggle, and victory,
   Ulster will once more put on record before the world her passionate
   loyalty to the Imperial connection, under which this province has
   served herself heir to the rewards of industry and freedom.
   Assuredly Ulster will fight. (48)

The Northern Whig invoked the loyalist "memories of sacrifice, and struggle, and victory," of which the Battle of the Boyne was one of the most powerful, in order to oppose the introduction of Home Rule. The night before in the theater, the same memories provided harmless merriment from curtain to curtain.

Revivals of Suzanne provide a good measure for the spectators' changing ability for self-reflexivity. At a 1914 revival of Suzanne and the Sovereigns at the Belfast Opera House, the Sinn Fein reviewer regretted that the comic spirit of the original was "sadly lacking." The apparently revised production exhibited "an obvious descent from the sublimely comic to the ridiculous, a sacrifice of wit to the commonplace joke-mongering of the Commercial Theatre." (49) A republican journal would, of course, be extremely sensitive to the growing extremism of unionist ideology during the years leading up to World War I. As such, the Sinn Fein critic might have found the sectarian banter painful rather than funny. The Belfast-based unionist press, however, received the "willfully grotesque" humor more wholeheartedly, (50) and praised the fact that "all its apparent recklessness is marked by the rarest discretion and good temper." (51)

A 1916 revival in Dublin proved again to be very successful, despite the recent memories of the Easter Rebellion. The Ulster players hired the Gaiety Theatre for a full week in November of that year and even held a special performance for "a number of wounded soldiers" under the patronage of the Lord Lieutenant. (52) The location of the Ulster company's production within the context of World War I illustrates the war's level of influence on Irish mainstream opinion and cultural life. At least three-quarters of every newspaper edition was devoted to war coverage on the continent and to its political and social impact at home. Unionists as well as a large number of nationalists joined the British forces on the European continent. Although they did so for different reasons, their joint efforts seemed to reduce North--South tensions and to open up opportunities for some kind of rapprochement.