Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Grania

Lorcan Cranitch and Ella Lily Hyland in Grania. Image: Ros Kavanagh

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There’s a famous statue by Giambologna in The Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. The Abduction, or Rape, of a Sabine Woman. The 16th sculpture depicting three nudes; a cowering old man, a virile young man, and a distressed young woman being whisked away from the old man by the younger. A statue that references a particular story whilst also being symbolic of other things; old age and youth, power and desire, and women as property in the world of men. Themes echoed in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Grania from 1912, receiving its first professional production. Gregory’s tale also referencing a far older tale, one featuring an aging man, a virile youth and a young woman. The legend of Grania and Diarmuid given a sly twist that makes for too many big asks. Leaving director Caitríona McLaughlin struggling to address the tensions in Gregory’s unwieldily and unconvincing script. One in which binaries such as realism and fairytale, women and boys, desire and duty are left unresolved.

If visually pleasing, Colin Richmond’s wheat and lily set, Sinéad Wallace’s amber lights, and Catherine’s Fay’s time neutral costumes evoke a liminal nowhere steeped in Celtic twilight; neither now nor long ago whilst aspiring to both. Grania’s bumbling start referencing contemporary Dublin’s immigration crisis as Seán Boylan and Laura Sheehan sing around a makeshift fire like a Greek chorus. Not for the last time will Carl Kennedy’s compositions wear on the ear, serving up unnecessary distractions. Into these fields of gold Grania, the King’s daughter, arrives to meet Finn, Ireland’s greatest warrior. Meeting for the first time the day before their wedding. Ella Lily Hyland’s self-assured Grania, a girl with (sugar) daddy issues and a thing for dangerous boys, is happy to wed Lorcan Cranitch’s much older Finn, resurrecting love in his rusted heart. Though whether love for Grania as woman or possession is up for debate.

Niall Wright and Ella Lily Hyland in Grania. Image: Ros Kavanagh

Until Diarmuid arrives; a man women find easy to love, allegedly. The bloodstained hero and the bride to be realising they’re wild about each other. Only he prefers celibacy to betraying Finn’s trust. A late night incident with an uncooperative candle finds Grania confiding her love to Diarmuid believing him to be the a man with his back turned to her. Bedlam ensues, demanding a double measure of suspension of disbelief as her love is found out. Diarmuid’s oath of celibacy and his promise to keep Grania safe from Finn’s wrath finding us drifting from legend into fairytale into farce, laughing as tragedy becomes comedy.

An annoying, two song intermezzo by Kennedy, drags on as a rain swept, snowstorm landscape sees figures constantly moving across it. If the point was to convey the passing of seven years in the wilderness, it succeeds in that it feels like seven years when the action recommences with a simple, powerful stage image. One doing more in ten seconds than all the music torn thundering that preceded it. Making it clear that Grania and Diarmuid were never a star crossed Romeo and Juliet. They were Adam and Eve hiding in the garden from a jealous God at the beginning of the world. Or the beginning of Ireland. Grania swimming naked as a naked Diarmuid spears fish capturing the beauty, the vulnerability, the tenderness and passion that Gregory points to but rarely harnesses. Grania, having finally slept with Diarmuid, is already planning to rearrange their lives to one more in keeping with her tastes. A see through disguise sets Diarmuid off to seek vengeance on a lusty king following a ruse by Finn, leading to recriminations, a complicated death scene, and a compromised future that, if it speaks to a new vision of Ireland, might well leave you feeling we were doomed from the start.

Lorcan Cranitch , Niall Wright and Ella Lily Hyland in Grania. Image: Ros Kavanagh

If many of Grania’s political and moral concerns sound hollow to modern ears, efforts to modernise the work only make matters worse. Connecting the wanderings of Diarmuid and Grania unable to return home with the plight of refugees via recurring images shoehorned in looks forced and weak. Then there’s Grania. Portrayed as a confident, sexually assured young woman playing off weak men with the sexual assurance of schoolboys undermines tension. Their confrontations less arguments so much as boys being bossed to bed by their bullish older sister. Duty, found in notions of male codes of honour sounding like childish, comic book heroics. Leaving Grania's patience, given she looks like she wouldn’t deny herself for seven minutes let alone seven years, making for a hard sell. Even as she feels like the only flesh and blood creature amongst a pair of male anachronisms. Finn and Diarmuid’s father-son relationship unsettled by what might be considered a homoerotic kiss. Their connection never properly explored but rather serving as fuel for an unconvincing reversal.

Grania is a historically significant play, making its first professional production historically signifiant. Lending the occasion a degree of gravitas as many delight in picking through its historical references. Arguing about Gregory’s own life and her relationship with an older husband and younger lover, about how this production corrects a wrong many feel should have been addressed long ago. But another argument as to why Grania has never been produced is that, as a three act play, it doesn’t satisfactorily come together whatever its offstage curios. What lingers is not Gregory’s outdated tale cobbled to met her ideological views, but Lorcan Cranitch’s impressive performance and Ella Lily Hyland’s no nonsense, self assured Grania; strong, brave, commanding and mesmerising. Like Hyland herself. Owning the stage and making this historic, inaugural Grania her very own.

Grania, by Lady Augusta Gregory, runs at The Abbey Theatre as part of  Dublin Theatre Festival 2024 until Oct 12, continuing its run until October 26.

For more information visit Dublin Theatre Festival 2024 or The Abbey Theatre