J. Clark Nicholson, Michael Bush & Ryan Hicks. Photo by John Bivins Photography.
What a wealth of images Ireland calls up in the American imagination—green hills and Guinness, the Blarney stone and peat bogs, leprechauns and banshees, car bombs and the Troubles, shamrocks and sea cliffs.
There’s a reason that almost everyone seems to be Irish come St. Patrick’s Day (and it’s not just for the beer). There’s something about the layered and ancient complexity of Ireland that takes an iron grip on our imaginations.
So, it’s surprising that there has never been a local production of the work of J.M. Synge, perhaps the most famous writer of the Irish Literary Renaissance and a playwright whose openings twice caused riots because of their intense scrutiny of the many conflicts woven into Irish culture—between paganism and Catholicism, the old ways and the new, Gaelic and English, women and men, the land and the sea, life and death. Synge’s plays not only capture that uneasiness but they do so in language so delicate and lyrical that they sometimes feel more like poetry than plays.
The poetry of Synge’s work is exactly why director Frank Henley wanted so much to bring his plays to Harrisburg audiences, their “intrinsic beauty,” as he puts it.
“This is beautiful writing for the sake of beautiful writing, but more than that, the things that Synge is writing about in such beautiful words are universal,” Henley said.
To further highlight that intricacy and universality, Henley decided to pair two one-acts: one set by the pitiless sea and one set in a lonely strath (a wide and empty field). He also decided to frame the plays with the poetry of W.B. Yeats, a friend and mentor to Synge, and the man who encouraged Synge to live on the Aran Islands, so that he could truly come to understand his fellow Irish. Thus was born the upcoming Gamut-Narçisse joint production of “Thistle & Salt: The Ireland of J.M. Synge; Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen.”
When Henley started Narçisse Theatre Company in 2016, it was because he wanted to embrace and connect all the diverse theater scenes in Harrisburg, to create a theater that was for Harrisburg, by Harrisburg. “Diversity, inclusion, and access,” he said, “is the touchstone of Narçisse,” and it’s one reason why Henley likes to partner with longer-established companies like Gamut. While Narçisse has been a community partner for Gamut productions in the past (most recently for “A Winter’s Tale,” the 2022 Shakespeare in the Park show) “Thistle and Salt” is their first true coproduction, and it’s an exciting shift.
Henley never wants to give an audience a simple answer; he never wants an audience to feel like he’s telling them what to think. So like Chekhov, he said that his mantra is simple: “No happy endings.” This makes him an ideal director for J.M. Synge, who was himself uninterested in simple answers and heroic endings. The characters in “Thistle & Salt” struggle and mourn, they torment themselves and each other, but they also always look beyond their narrow lives. As one character says, “The rain is falling, but the air is kind and maybe it’ll be a grand morning by the grace of God.” In that one sentence is a sense of the divine, an acceptance of the inevitable, and a determined hope that makes even bad days good. And yet, there is no promise of happiness, and isn’t that life in a nutshell?
It would, however, be a mistake to think that a lack of happy endings makes for depressing theater. These plays are deliciously dark in their comedy (such as a man pretending to be dead but waking up for a sip of whiskey) and compelling in their tragedy (like the beautifully eerie keening that is how the Irish must mourn between death and burial). There will also be fiddle music and even Irish dancing from the McGinley School of Irish Dance.
“Audiences should be ready to push aside all their preconceived, stereotypical images of Ireland and see that this is a culture that is immensely old, one shaped by millennia of hardship,” said Henley. “And yet the Irish, despite their tragedies and troubles, have an enchanted spirit that lives and breathes till this day.”
And that’s what awaits audiences at Gamut—living, breathing enchantment.
“Thistle and Salt: The Ireland of J.M. Synge” runs from March 4 to 19 at Gamut Theatre, 15 N. 4th St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.gamuttheatre.org/thistle-salt or www.narcissetheatre.org/current.
UPCOMING EVENTS
At Gamut Theatre
www.gamuttheatre.org
717-238-4111
“Thistle & Salt: The Ireland of J.M. Synge”
March 4 to 19
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.
Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
“Improvapalooza”
March 25 at 7:30 p.m.
“The Jungle Book”
March 31 to April 2
Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday at 2:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
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