Irishtown – 01 May 2025

Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s dark comedy Irishtown explores the concept of how theatre is created and whether it’s best to stay within the realm of what you know or boldly use your imagination to explore topics of interest even if the story you’re telling isn’t yours. The play examines a theatre troupe rehearsing a new work with a living playwright under a tight time crunch. From the beginning, Aisling (Brenda Meaney)’s play is met with resistance by her colleagues, most notably Quin (Kevin Oliver Lynch), the only man in the room. He appears not to understand the play, because it is about sexual assault told through a woman’s eyes, and struggles with how far removed its writing is from all things Irish. When the writer gets angry about criticism from all involved team members, including seasoned actress Constance (Kate Burton), her girlfriend Siofra (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), and the English director Poppy (Angela Reed) and pulls the rights to her script, the actors endeavor to devise a play that is similar to the Irish stories the outside world knows and loves, but they comedically keep getting stuck on ideas centering on sexual assault. Clarity comes at the end of the show when Aisling returns and dramatically reveals that she lied about writing her own story and was actually telling Quin’s.

As a man, it can be tough to confront sexual assault, and it seems as though Quin’s real objection to the way Aisling wrote his story may have come from a desire to have his story told authentically, similar to how he really experienced it. Even though he wasn’t brave enough to tell it himself, he wanted the story to be Irish and to reflect cultural elements of his real life experience reporting his mistreatment because he wanted his story to be in the cannon of normal experiences so that the next man to go through what he went through can find himself in the play and know that he is not the only man to be a victim of sexual misconduct. Everything in the story is, in some way, an allegory for this. Devising a play full of Irish stereotypes that cannot give the full picture of what it means to be Irish. The English director’s sexual dalliances with the young actors representing English colonization—an unfair power struggle where Siofra, the actress in question, is trying to leverage Poppy’s power and doesn’t want to see herself as a victim. In the attempts to devise a play, Quin has an affinity for being the aggressor, enjoying most the attempts in which he was perpetrating incest or infidelity—clearly an attempt to make sure no one paints him as a victim because he doesn’t want to be pitied.

What’s odd throughout the play is that there is no debate on morality. From the beginning, sexual assault is accepted as a good story. Incest is accepted as a good story. Colonization is accepted as a good story. Isolation is accepted as a good story. Alcoholism is accepted as a good story. Infidelity/cheating is accepted as a good story. It’s all in good fun because it’s part of a good story. Aisling gets understandably upset when she finds out about Siofra sleeping with Poppy, but she never explicitly states that it was wrong for her to do so. When Constance and Quin gossip about Poppy’s scandalous past regarding sleeping with ingénues, it’s thought of as funny. There’s even a moment where Quin asks Constance if it’s true and she says something to the effect of not knowing but enjoying talking about it. Everything American sensibilities pass judgment on is forgiven. Quin never even discusses the difficulty of being a male victim of sexual assault; he just says that he prefers to call it harassment and indicates that everyone here (all women) has experienced that, which they all also acknowledge. As this beautiful bonding is taking place, the team gets a phone call from the producer, McCabe (Roger Clark) indicating that American audiences find this commonplace Irish experience so engaging that they want to make it a feature film.

The story comes full circle to not be about writing what you know, but righting what you know.  Even though Aisling’s version of Quin’s story doesn’t include every detail accurately or even fully capture the nuanced emotions of Quin’s experience, it is an attempt to share a story about a prevalent issue that in many cultures is attached to shame, and it brings to light that the prevalence makes a shared experience relatable and worthy of discussion, amplification, and a little artistic license. Taken as a whole, Irishtown does a wonderful job of displaying unconditional acceptance of everyone, regardless of origin or circumstance (even the English). Whether art is created to hide a backstory or illuminate one, its essential task is to make an audience consider something from an outside perspective. Both the play within the play, and Irishtown itself, did that marvelously. It was an incredible experience of laughing, and being seen in the laughter.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.