The W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre
Written by Neil Bradley
Adapted from Writings by Sean O’Casey
Directed by Mark Shanahan
Thursday, April 4 at 7pm
Friday, April 5 at 8pm
“Some Latin writer once said: ‘If a crow would feed in quiet, it would have more meat.’ A thing this Green Crow could never do: it has always and has still to speak and speak while it seeks and finds its food, and so has had less meat than it might have had if only it had kept its big beak shut.” – Sean O’Casey, The Green Crow
Throughout the years, Sean O’Casey dubbed himself “The Green Crow” in several books of fulminations in which he used his caw to skewer hypocrisy and pomposity in a wide range of Irish targets that roused his ire, from W.B. Yeats to the Roman Catholic Church. There is a note of particular relish in the caws he directed against organized religion since he felt churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, denied life its simple pleasures.
An original work created for The Sean O’Casey Season at Irish Rep, The Green Crow Caws is an evening of O’Casey songs and satire drawn from his autobiographical writings in which he employs his wonderfully sardonic wit on a number of topics. Join us to experience O’Casey’s grand, humorous salute to St. Patrick’s Day; uproarious send-up of The Playboy of the Western World riots; and dire meditations on the possibility of Russian paratroopers dropping from the skies onto the Emerald Sod.
Most of O’Casey’s jeremiads against people and institutions were because, in his opinion, they misrepresented life as dismal and hopeless. In his middle eighties he was all for a song and a dance in the robust style of the Elizabethans. The cynicism of his day he described as “sly, mean, and commonplace.”
In 84 years, O’Casey absorbed a lot of pain and disappointment, but he refused to be downhearted. The concluding three lines in one of his essays are:
Caw Caw Caw Caw
A herald angel sings,
An evenin’s full of th’ green crows wings.
The Green Crow wrote like no other man in literature, personal, truthful, cackling – all showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that laughter is, indeed, the best revenge for anger.
All readings are free to attend. Invitations were sent via email. To request an invitation, call the Irish Rep box office at 212-727-2737.
