Arrah-Na-Pogue
Purdy's Opera House / Bath, NY / 1886
(Ashton Co. Touring Production)
Original Production:
Niblo's Garden, (7/12/1865 - Closing date unknown)
Opening Date: Jul 12, 1865
Closing date unknown:
Description: A play in three acts
Opening Night Cast:
T. H. Glenney
Josephine Orton
Revival:
Niblo's Garden, (8/02/1869 - 9/04/1869)
Opening Date: Aug 02, 1869
Closing Date: Sep 04, 1869
Total Performances: 30
Cast:
J.W. Brutone, Dan Bryant, Rose Eytinge, Josephine Fiddes
Alexander Fitzgerald, J. Lynch, Dominick Murray
2nd Revival:
Haverly's 14th Street Theatre
Opening Date: Sep 07, 1903
Closing Date: Oct 31, 1903
Total Performances: 65
Cast:
Edward Aiken, S. Anderson, G. L. Baker, Edith Barker
John Birch, Marie Dibrook, Maggie Fielding, Joseph French
Daniel Gilfether, Beatrice Harris, V. Hathaway, Thomas E. Jackson
Frank M. Kendrick, Anne Leonard, Andrew Mack (see poster below)
N. Mackey, O. Mann, Luke Martin, Thomas McGrane, John Napier, Marie Napier
Thomas Paulton, M. E. Reddy, John S. Robertson, Florence Russel, Lizzie Sanger
Emma Scully, Anna Turner, Anna Wilson, May Wilson
(Actual program measures 11"x 24")
Written in 1864 and set during the Irish rebellion of 1798,
Arrah na Pogue is an entertaining tale
of romance and misadventure with rascally rebels,
despicable villains and love struck youths.
Director Mikel Murfi approaches this with a nod and a wink, delivering a family-friendly show with characters played like children let loose with a dressing-up box. The cast of 15 hurtles through the opening scenes,
moving bits of scenery, bouncing on trampolines and sliding down hills. But the plot's elaborate convolutions – involving a rebel on the run after the 1798 Rising, love triangles, mistaken identity and betrayal –
need time to take their course; the busyness of the staging runs out of steam before the two and a half hours of eloquent declamation get their due.
The most successful scenes are when Boucicault's lyricism is allowed to speak for itself, underscored delicately by Conor Linehan's live piano. As Shaun the Post, Aaron Monaghan strikes a perfect balance between irony
and passion: his threatened execution is genuinely poignant, matched by the sincerity of Mary Murray as his beloved, Arrah Meelish.
Other performances adopt one note – of shouting exaggeration – and stick to it, so that the courtroom scene becomes a trial for the audience as much as the defendant. Yet caricature is only part of the point:
by portraying soldiers who
larger forces over which they have no control.
