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Ireland has produced more than its share of great dramatists: Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and Samuel Beckett, to name a few. Beyond their Irish ancestry, these prominent names have one other thing in common: they’re all men.
With its upcoming production, Rochester Community Players adds an Irish woman’s name to that distinguished list: Teresa Deevy, whose 1937 drama “Wife to James Whelan” receives its first local performances next week at the Multi-Use Community Cultural Center.
At the time she wrote “Wife to James Whelan,” Deevy had written six plays successfully produced at Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre. (She never heard any of them performed; she had been deaf since the age of 19.) But when she submitted her seventh script, the Abbey’s director rejected it out of hand, claiming it repeated characters and situations from her previous plays. (It seems more likely that the rejection was based on the strong Roman Catholicism and repressive attitudes of Irish society in the 1930s; a recent constitutional act had even discouraged women from working outside the home.)
The play was performed on the radio in 1944, and then put away in a suitcase with other manuscripts, until Deevy’s nephew discovered it many years later. New York’s Mint Theatre took up Deevy’s cause and presented several of her plays for a successful run in 2010.
The Mint Theatre later brought “Wife to James Whelan” to London. According to the play’s director, Jean Gordon Ryon, RCP’s run of eight performances in Rochester may be the play’s first since the Mint Theatre productions.
After the refusal of “Wife to James Whelan,” Deevy concentrated on writing radio plays, short stories, and essays. When she died in 1963, Deevy was mostly forgotten, a sad situation for a dramatist that Ryon compares to “an Irish Chekhov.”
Unlike the social and political jousting of Shaw or the absurdism of Beckett, Deevy wrote her plays, including “Wife to James Whelan,” in a naturalistic vein, describing the realities of Irish life—and often finding them unfair and difficult, particularly for women.
James Whelan is an ambitious young man in the Irish village of Kilbeggan who is given a great professional opportunity in Dublin. He gives Nan Bowers, the woman he loves, the choice of agreeing to go with him or waiting for his return. She does neither and they go their separate ways. When they meet again seven years later, Nan is a poor widow with a small child; James is unmarried and owns a thriving bus service. Will Nan, or another woman, become the wife of James Whelan?
Deevy’s plot is simple; her characters are not. Chekhov would probably approve of the play’s rueful tone and ambiguous ending. “These characters don’t always go in the directions you’d think,” says Ryon. “They make difficult choices and much later deal with their ramifications, which are often very different than they expected. James and Nan give things up, but at a price.”
Luke Dempster and Andrea Daszkiewicz appeared together in last year’s Irish production, “The Ferryman.” In “Wife to James Whelan,” they play the vexed central couple, James and Nan.
Both actors agree on their approach to portraying complicated people whose words and actions often belie their deepest feelings, recalling the words of their director: “These are two headstrong, outgoing people who would rather be right than be happy.”
Adds Dempster: “There’s also a strong sense of social class in this play, and in my character. James is preoccupied with success; he wants to do what looks best on paper, and will give him stability and status.”
“In the first act of the play, Nan is ready to marry James,” says Daszkiewicz, “but when he asks her to wait for him her reaction is, ‘Wait? No!’ In fact, she turns two men down in the course of the play. The Irish social system of the 1930s was just not set up to handle such an independent woman.”
Ryon has directed Irish plays for RCP’s Irish Program since her first, Hugh Leonard’s “Da,” in 2000. Since then, her repertoire has included the 18th-century comedy of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and Jez Butterworth’s 2017 drama “The Ferryman.”
Ryon has wanted to present “Wife to James Whelan” since she saw the Mint Theatre’s performance in 2010. “It’s exciting to share this important and almost unknown work by a deaf, female writer,” says Ryon.
She finds the most satisfying aspect of her many years presenting Irish drama in Rochester to be “sharing the rich dramatic tradition of Ireland with the audience and the actors.” For her, the work of Teresa Deevy deserves a place among “the many great plays that were born in that tiny island. The language, the complex characters, the compelling stories—all of it makes these plays such fun, and so satisfying, to work on and to watch.”
Rochester Community Players presents “Wife to James Whelan,” by Teresa Deevy, April 9-18 at the Multi-use Community Cultural Center, 142 Atlantic Ave. The April 11 performance is ASL interpreted.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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