Cast
Christopher Gore (Simon Jones)
Margaret O'Donnell (Sarah Agnew)
Dr. Richard Gore (Richard S. Iglewski)
Con Doherty (Matthew Amendt)
Johnny MacLoone (James Ramlet)
Perkins (Steve Lewis)
Mary Sweeney (Virginia S. Burke)
Sally Cavanagh (Maggie Chestovich)
Clement O'Donnell (Charles Keating)
David Gore (Michael Bakkensen)
Tommy Boyle (Samuel Finnegan Pearson)
Maisie McLaughlin (Juliet Paulson/Scarlett Thompson)
Directed by Joe Dowling
On Saturday, November 10th I went to see American Premiere of Brian Friel's The Home Place (shown on the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, September 22- November 25, 2007).
Like Friel's Translations (which I saw last January at the Biltmore Theatre in NYC), The Home Place focuses on Anglo-Irish relations during the 1800s. I think Thomas Kilroy gives a wonderfully succinct summary which I will include:
Dr. Richard Gore (Iglewski) and his assistant Perkins (Lewis) visit the town of Ballybeg and stay at the Lodge of Dr. Gore's cousin, Christoper Gore (Jones). During their stay, they invite the townsfolk up the Lodge in order to measure and classify individuals of the region following anthropological advancements of the era (for method, see excerpt below). All participants are regarded as specimens, and Dr. Gore treats them as such by inhumanly snapping their arms out to meet his measuring stick and by abruptly tilting their heads to meet his when assessing their eye and hair color.
The Home Place is a companion piece of his earlier play Translations. In that particular play the central image is place-naming, the changing of place-names from one language to another, an image of occupation. In The Home Place the central image is of Victorian anthropometry, a quack science of measuring heads to divine racial and moral characteristics. Another image, in short, of conquest and colonization (1).Thus, this story revolves around profiling individuals based on socio-economic status as well as Phrenology.
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Dr. Richard Gore (Iglewski) and his assistant Perkins (Lewis) visit the town of Ballybeg and stay at the Lodge of Dr. Gore's cousin, Christoper Gore (Jones). During their stay, they invite the townsfolk up the Lodge in order to measure and classify individuals of the region following anthropological advancements of the era (for method, see excerpt below). All participants are regarded as specimens, and Dr. Gore treats them as such by inhumanly snapping their arms out to meet his measuring stick and by abruptly tilting their heads to meet his when assessing their eye and hair color.
Perkins: Dr. Gore will also take note of the colour of each specimens’ eyes; the main classifications being light, medium and dark. These colours are then subdivided into all blue, bluish grey, light grey, dark brown, brownish grey, hazel, light hazel, hazel grey, hazel green, green –
Richard: Perkins.
Perkins: Sir. Hair will also be noted and classified as red, fair, brown, dark or black. Black hair – niger – hence nigrescence – includes not only jet-black but also that very intense brown which occurs in people who in childhood have very dark-brown hair which in the adult cannot be distinguished from coal black except in very good light.
Richard: As today.
Perkins: As indeed today, Sir. When everybody has been processed I will lead you to the yard at the rear of the house and there I will take a photograph, or image on chemical paper, of each specimen.
Tommy: That’s what has me up here! The mammy thinks I’m beautiful!
Perkins: This photograph is in lieu of payment and will be your personal trophy. It can be picked up here in The Lodge in three weeks’ time – if that is suitable for you, Mr. Gore?
Christopher: On one condition: that you take a photograph of Margaret here too.
Margaret: Christopher!
Richard: Please.
Perkins: My pleasure, Sir. All our computations are made in millimeters in accordance with guidelines laid down by the London Anthropological Institute; even though the Frankfurt Congress – to which most of our anthropometrist brothers subscribe – would prefer that we take our –
Richard: Perkins.
Perkins: Sir.
Richard: Let’s commence.
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Photograph by: Michael Daniel
What I find most upsetting is the truth behind Friel's illustration, that ancient anthropological methods such as Dr. Gore's were implemented for years to justify racial and personality profiling. Within the context of this play, I was relieved to see that characters, such as David Gore (Bakkensen), also found these measurements of character as morally flawed:
Richard: We’ve taken hundreds of photographs of the Aran tribe and everybody gets a picture of himself as a reward. Photographs are our glass beads.The awareness and ignorance of racism Friel places side-by-side is simultaneously invigorating and frustrating. We see that things must change– but we know that we cannot control the past–just like we cannot control the outcome of a fictional story. What is important is to recognize this piece in its historical context, and realize that it speaks to a modern audience of our ability to challenge and revise modes of thought. As Elmer Andrews so eloquently says:
David: Isn’t that a little crude?
Christopher: Richard crude? Never!
Richard: I promise you that the natives are thrilled by them. Send them as special trophies to their relatives in America.
Richard: Now, Chris, all that’s missing are our specimens. How many do you expect?
Christopher: As many as turn up, I suppose. […]
Richard: These people are your tenants, aren’t they?
Christopher: Some of them, yes. Perhaps all of them.
Richard: They are or they are not?
Christopher: That depends on who volunteers, doesn’t it? [Laughs.] If anybody does.
Richard: …Last season I was at an archery meeting in Kilkenny and the South Mayo Agricultural Show: And at both events the upper Irish classes there had lighter-coloured hair and lighter-coloured eyes than the lower Irish classes. And why? Agenerous infusion of English blood into the new landed classes and the new professional classes — people who were mere cotters or tribesmen a few generations back.
Richard: Yes, yes, we have become very expert at drawing up our charts and our tables and our dreary pedigrees. But the big prize still eludes us, David.
David: Does it?
Richard: Isn’t it possible that that combination of black hair and strong chin and clear complexion is much more than the haphazard confluence of physical accidents? That they constitute an ethnic code we can’t yet decipher? That they are signposts to an enormous vault of genetic information that is only just beyond the reach of our understanding? Are they saying to us – these physical features – if only we could hear them – are they whispering to us: crack our code and we will reveal to you how a man thinks, what his character traits are, his loyalties, his vices, his entire intellectual architecture. Because if we could interpret that hair and chin and complexion, would it tell us that artful Sally could be a designer of a brilliant canal system, a compulsive liar, a new Florence Nightingale, a rebel at heart maybe, maybe even a traitor? … If we could break into that vault, David, we wouldn’t control just an empire. We would rule the entire universe.
The central problem which Friel, along with a good many other Irish writers, faces is how to negotiate between the past and the future, how to reconcile traditional value and the search for individual freedom and authenticity, how to avoid the danger of fossilization on one hand, and the danger of postmodern dehumanization on the other. What transpires in the ironically named ‘gentle island’ epitomizes the crisis of culture in the larger island of Ireland: the unresolved conflict between Tradition and Modernity (2).
Friel's other emphasis in this play is the identity of home. In the beginning, and throughout the play, we see Margaret O'Donnell (Agnew) facing decisions such as marriage– to David or Christopher?– and relocation–does she belong at the Lodge or in America?
Working on the hill at the Lodge, Margaret automatically becomes socially elite; her distance from the locals and financial security mark her as different.
As she seeks to identify where her home is, she has the role of both reassuring her lover, David Gore, and comforting his father, Christopher, about their place in the world. She firmly states how they each belong at the Lodge, that it is their home.
The quintessential moment occurs after Margaret rejects Christopher's marriage proposal. While listening to the music flowing from the school across the valley, she seems to come into her own understanding that the Lodge and life she once knew may not be where she belongs.
Margaret: Course you can. Margaret: ... Listen to the music. Pay attention to the music. Christopher: I’m shattered, Maggie. I’m in total confusion.
I really don’t think – 
Christopher: Don’t think I’m able to rise above any more.
[…] Not able any more. Resilience is exhausted, Maggie. […]
Photograph by: Michal Daniel
I found this moment speaking to me directly. I heard Friel saying: we will rise above, we will find our place in the world. Even among those who seem so sure of their ways, we will find our own opinion, and in turn we will claim what is most dear to us, what we strive to find and then protect against all else, a place of stability and wholeness... Home.
Bibliography: Other Reviews:
Star Tribune Review Theater review: "'The Home Place' plods, despite potential."
City Pages Review : "Lives—and a Way of Life—Come Unraveled in the Guthrie's Tense, Complex American Premiere Grand Disillusions"
National Catholic Reporter: "Cracking the code by measuring the skull: Friel's 'The Home Place' examines 19th-century homeland security."
