Cock-a-doodle dandy - Sean O'Casey - Google Books Snippet view - 1949 Common terms and phrases 1ST ROUGH FELLOW 2ND ROUGH FELLOW Abbey Theatre afther BELLMAN bottle Catholic censorship chairs Church Cock Cock-a-doodle Dandy Cock's comedy comes comic D'ye damned dance dancin demon dhrink disthrict Dublin evil eyes face FATHER DOMINEER frightened Gaelic garden gate gateway George Jean Nathan girl goes goin Green Crow head heard hell holy Ireland Irish James Joyce Joyce JULIA Juno Knights of Columbanus lass laughter Letters London look Looka LORELEEN LORN LORNA LORRY-DRIVER Lourdes Macmillan MARION MESSENGER Michael Marthraun MICHAEL Th Mick night nothin Nyadnanave O'Casey's ONE-EYED LARRY outa pathway play porch priest Publication Robin Adair round Sailor Mahan Sean O'Casey Sean O'Faolain SERGEANT SHANAAR shouting stand Star stretcher tall there's things thinkin thrue thryin trousers undher W. B.

Yeats wall wearing What's whisper window woman women world premiere Yeats Yeats's York young About the author (1991) Unlike the directors of the Abbey Theatre, Sean O'Casey was slum-born and bred, self-educated, and deeply involved in the political and labor ferment that preceded Irish independence. His famous group of realistic plays produced at the Abbey form, in effect, a commentary on each stage of the independence movement. The melodramatic The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), the first to be staged, deals with the guerrilla war conducted by the IRA until the peace treaty was signed in 1921. Juno and the Paycock (1925), cast in the mold of classic comedy, describes the civil war and failure of hopes that followed the settlement. The last to be produced, The Plough and the Stars (1926), set off howls of resentment by returning to the Easter 1916 uprising itself, and condemning the vanity of the nationalists and the dogmatism of labor, who squabble while Dublin, in the person of its women, suffers martyrdom. It was expected that the Abbey audience would be unsympathetic.

However, when even the Abbey management, in the person of W.B. Yeats, turned against the antiwar play, The Silver Tassie (1928), O'Casey (who had already taken up residence in London and married) determined to remain in "exile." It was an ill-chosen moment to throw himself upon the mercy of a commercial theater, because O'Casey was just embarking on a series of dramatic experiments: Within the Gates (1934), in which the stylized polyphony of urban activities recalls the panorama of The Plough and the Stars and anticipates more modern works such as Arnold Wesker's Kitchen (1959); The Star Turns Red (1940), a vision of an anti-fascist revolution; and Purple Dust (1940), a fantasy cleansing of the remnants of imperialism from Ireland. Without an assured theater, these and his later plays were condemned to productions often amateurish and unhelpful to the reviser, sometimes coming years after O'Casey had reluctantly published the text. (An exception was the exemplary New York production of Within the Gates in 1934.

But Irish playwrights have often done better in New York than London.) After World War II, O'Casey turned to a third, still more idiosyncratic form of drama, of which his own favorite example was Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy (1949). Broadly satirical depictions of rural Ireland in the grip of church and complacency, these were Aristophanic comedies with a great deal of folk culture and music hall in their constitution. Their reception was appropriately divided: Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy received its first production at the Royal Court in 1959; The Drums of Father Ned was forced out of the Dublin Festival of 1958. In the 1930s, O'Casey served as a drama critic for London's Time and Tide, producing a group of scathing comments on West End conventionality, which have been published as The Flying Wasp (1937). Other essays on theater appear in The Green Crow (1956), Under a Colored Cap (1963), and Blasts and Benedictions (1967). Sean O'Casey died in 1964.

Bibliographic information Review: Cock-A-Doodle Dandy | Pantagleize Theatre Company | Amphibian Stage Productions ~!~Seth Johnston and Lark Wallis-Johnston in Pantagleize Theatre Company's "Cock-A-Doodle Dandy." Photo by Shannon Atkinson.~!~ Review: Cock-A-Doodle Dandy | Pantagleize Theatre Company | Amphibian Stage Productions Dandy Passion Video: Sean O'Casey's daughter Shivaun talks about her father and Pantagleize Theatre's brave undertaking of his favorite play. by Mark Lowry published Saturday, November 21, 2009 Some of my favorite theater people in town are the ones who do it because there is no other choice. They're going to put on a show—and something that they feel passionate about—no matter what. Take Fort Worth's Pantagleize Theatre Company . This small outfit was founded earlier this decade by Violet O'Valle and her now-late husband Roy, with a mission to produce rarely staged plays by international playwrights.

The group has taken on works by Jan de Hartog, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Jean Anouilh, Athol Fugard and Henrik Ibsen (one of his lesser-known works, Little Eyolf). They've also done a few American playwrights, including Ted Talley and Donald Margulies. The group's name comes from a character in a work by Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode, which you can read about here . O'Valle has always been most passionate about Irish writers (the group did Yeats' The Only Jealousy of Emer), and that is her educational specialty. She wrote her dissertation on the great Irish writer Sean O'Casey. In 2007, while Pantagleize traveled to Ireland to perform the Yeats show at the Hopkins Literary Festival in Monasterevan, O'Valle met Shivaun O'Casey, daughter of Sean. The friendship stuck, and Violet vowed to direct Sean's Cock-A-Doodle Dandy in Fort Worth, and bring Shivaun here to see it. She has made good on that promise.

Shivaun O'Casey made an appearance at Friday night's performance, where TheaterJones shot the video interview above. In it, she talks about her father, this play and the contemporary Irish playwrights she likes (Sebastian Barry, yes; Martin McDonagh, not so much). She also discusses her 2005 documentary Sean O'Casey: Under a Coloured Cap, which includes footage shot of his widow by American filmmaker Albert Maysles (of Grey Gardens fame). She will again appear at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center on Saturday night (Nov. 21), and engage the audience in a talk-back after the performance. The play, seen as anti-Catholic and socialist, was controversial in Ireland and in America. That didn't scare the great Margo Jones , who mounted its American premiere at her Fair Park theater on January 30, 1950, at Theatre '50 (she changed the name every year). At that point, O'Casey had severed ties with Dublin's Abbey Theatre, and he gave Jones the rights to his play.

He wrote to her "I hope your gallant theatre will live long and bless many good work in production during the years to come." Jones later tried to take it to Broadway, but religious protesters prevented this from happening, after it had begun rehearsals there. The show is still rarely performed, and certainly not as popular as O'Casey's most loved works Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars. But Cock-A-Doodle Dandy, about an enchanted rooster who has the power to change shape and exposes the oppression of Father Domineer, was his favorite play. It's unlikely you'll have another chance to see it anytime soon. For that reason alone, get a ticket—and quickly, as there are only two performances left. The production is low-budget and has some performance issues—the major one being that not everyone in the cast attempts an Irish accent, and many of them who do aren't consistent—but it is a spirited staging. There is a standout turn by Seth Johnston as Sailor Mahan and by Jeremy Henslee, who plays the non-speaking mystical rooster, colorfully costumed by Hip Pocket Theatre's Diane Simons.

Plus, Shivaun was thrilled with the Pantagleize version, as you'll hear in the video. The only higher praise could have come from the author himself. And that would require some serious mojo, perhaps from a magic rooster. Saturday, 10/2/10 | WSJ Saturday Puzzle 24:37 (Patrick Berry’s “Section Eight” ) Barry Silk’s New York Times crossword Oh, look. The Friday puzzle we didn’t have yesterday because we had a Wednesday tribute puzzle instead has been moved to Saturday, only I swear it’s a few skoshes easier than the easiest Friday NYT. I have rarely, if ever, cracked the 4-minute mark on a Friday puzzle. And on a Saturday? ‘Tis madness. By the numbers: 68 words. The short legs of the four L-shaped black square chunks are technically “cheater squares,” but I wouldn’t want to muck up the excellent assortment of long answers just to have fewer black squares on the page. Among the highlights: 15a. This clue is wrong. CALIFORNIA is not [Orange’s place]. I live in Illinois. 17a. Here’s another color clue.

[Blue, say] means ADULTS ONLY. 37a/4d. [With 4-Down, German equivalent of Time] is the news magazine DER / SPIEGEL. That’s German for “The Mirror.” 44a. Did anyone else’s college have a PRIMAL SCREAM tradition? At 9 or 10 p.m. during finals week, masses of students would let loose with a stress-relieving scream. [Supposed aid in curing neurosis]? Not exactly the way it was repurposed at Carleton. 50a. Who doesn’t love the CAPYBARA, a [Rodent that may weigh over 100 pounds]? If you don’t know what a capybara looks like, check out this video of a capybara …in a necktie…eating frozen blueberry yogurt. 55a. “HAIL, CAESAR!” is a [Senate cry]. There’s no crying in baseball, but in the Senate? Sure thing. 2d. Here’s the full name of SEAN O’CASEY, the [Irish playwright who wrote “Cock-a-Doodle Dandy”].

Boy, I sure never heard of that play, but O’Casey seems to be the primary Irish playwright seen in crosswords. Well, there’s also OSCAR WILDE, whose name is also 10 letters long. Ooh, I bet that trips up a lot of solvers. 9d. Interesting tidbit I’ve never heard before: the N.S.A. has a nickname, NO SUCH AGENCY. It’s a [Organization nickname that plays off the group’s secrecy] and has the same initials. You could call it the National Security Agency, but are you sure it exists? 22d. I read the clue [“Get a little closer” brand] and the jingle began to play in my head. ARRID Extra Dry! Now, that’s just silly. 26d. Four-word phrase GET A READ ON is clued as the verb [Sense]. Not to be confused with “get a bead on,” meaning “aim at.” Now, there’s plenty of short fill in the lowlight files. Abbrevs UTIL, GMT, SYS. Crosswordese ADIT, RILL, RANI, TAY.

[Squad booster] RAH, which I’m not convinced anyone has actually uttered while cheering on a team in the last 50 years. (Is there a cheerleader in the house who can refute this?) Beginnings and endings UNI, ENNE, RONI and ADE. Italian (?) ANNI, 11d: [Millennio divisions]. Partials A CASE and AN ARM. These did not enchant, no, they didn’t. But the long answers fell so quickly I didn’t fully take note of all the shorter fill while solving. Patrick Berry’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Puzzle, “Section Eight” Ooh, these round “Section Eight” puzzles work me over. I keep plugging away and find myself almost despairing of ever finishing, having zero idea what the answer to a clue is. But then I remember that I can use logic to muscle through the last few answers—all the letters in an inside ring will appear in a segment, plus one of the two other letters included in the ring outside my blank zone. Now, there were a great many clues I didn’t have answers to before I had suggestive batches of letters to work with.

One of the last two answers I was able to fill in was RED CLOUD, the [Sioux war chief who declared war on the U.S. in 1866]. Who?? That’s not ringing a bell at all. LONG-LOST shouldn’t have been so tough, but the clue, [Unseen for years, as a family member], had me thinking the relative was locked in the attic or the basement rather than out of state. Also coming near the end was the Ingmar Bergman movie trivia: DEATH is [Whom the knight plays chess with in Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”]. That sounds sort of familiar—not that I’ve seen that or any other Bergman film. Highlights include cool fill such as the GLOBE THEATRE, CREAM SODA (my favorite flavor of Dum Dum sucker ), Aldus DUMBLEDORE, the GOLD STANDARD, a SAND DOLLAR (the [Echinoderm with a flat round skeleton]), and HAROLD AND MAUDE. Updated Saturday morning: Donna S.

Levin’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, “Snake in the Grass”—Janie’s review Once again we have a Saturday puzzle that is the perfect complement to the Friday that preceded it. Yesterday’s “High and Mighty” brought us a puzzle with ALP embedded in each theme phrase. Today’s embedded word is more earthbound; or, as Donna spells it out at 53-Down [Venomous snakes lurking in each of the four longest puzzle answers] ASPS. Not only have we gone from the lofty to the low, but look—(disregarding that final “S”) only one letter has changed. Sweet. Here’s how Donna charms us with her secreted serpents: 17A. “GAG ME WITH A SPOON!” [“Ick!” in Valley Girl lingo]. Also what might be uttered upon encountering a snake in the grass. Quickly followed by “Eek!” no doubt. Then “UGH!” another [Expression of distaste]. 26A. PLEASED AS PUNCH [Delighted]. Delightful. 44A. TEXAS PANHANDLE [Northernmost area of the Lone Star State]. Interesting.

In 1915 this area sought to become the independent state of Jefferson. Also, because of its strong winds, it’s become “one of the fastest-growing wind-power-producing regions in the nation.” Thus spake Wiki . 58A. SARATOGA SPRINGS [Site of a historic New York thoroughbred racetrack]. As in perpetual fiancée Adelaide’s lament that instead of eloping when she and Nathan Detroit “get on the train for Niagara…they get off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time…” (For the musical-theatre-challenged, that’s a Guys and Dolls reference.) The environmentalists get their day today first with [Chilean] SEA BASS [(Patagonian toothfish)]. Here’s a backgrounder on why eating this juicy whitefish has become controversial. Is it or isn’t it an endangered species? You be the judge—but note that the species is neither Chilean nor a sea bass, but that it is (as Donna correctly clues it) a toothfish.

(Hafta say, though, I think the marketing folks were wise to re-brand this one…) Then there’s both the LORAX [Environmentally friendly Seuss character] and the ECO-CAR [Environmentally friendly vehicle]. Other items that caught my eye: PLATE, clued as [Full-page illustration]. Generally don’t give thought to that usage and found it refreshing as a clue/fill combo. SPIN-OUT, or [Lose control at the Indy 500]. Risky business that. The Good Book references [Biblical brother whose name means “hairy”] for ESAU (think of Beyond the Fringe: …”for Esau is an hairy man and I am an smooth man…”); and [Biblical figure who could read the writing on the wall] for DANIEL. Didn’t know that it was Daniel who read the proverbial “ handwriting on the wall ” predicting the end of the Babylonian Empire. [Ace in poker slang] for BULLET, because I enjoy learning new slang. GARETH, not only a crossword constructor and Fiend-poster, but [Knight of the Round Table]. Started out with GAWAIN here. Anyone else?

And finally, APPLAUSE for [Sign of appreciation]. Consider yourself appreciated, Donna! Harvey Estes’ Los Angeles Times crossword This 72-worder doesn’t have any crazy stuff I’ve never seen in a crossword before, but it does have some lovely clues. Here are my favorites: 15a. [Lemon source] isn’t a tree or orchard or grocery; it’s a USED CAR LOT. 17a. A RADIAL TIRE is [One lacking bias]. Kinda wanted something along the lines of an anti-racist. 45a. [Common chuckwalla habitat] is the DESERT. “Chuckwalla” is a cool-looking word. It’s a lizard , apparently. I might’ve guessed small desert mammal. 53a. [Quarter of a yard] is the old unit of measure called the SPAN. It’s nine inches, so a quarter of 36 inches. 6d. [Comics character who said “Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don’t help”] is CALVIN of “Calvin and Hobbes” fame. 13d.

[Ann Landers or Abigail Van Buren] could be ADVICE COLUMNIST (too long) or NOM DE PLUME (which fits), but each is also a TWIN SISTER. 14d. For [Legendary swimmer], I was thinking of Gertrude Ederle (first woman to swim across the English Channel, 1926) and Olympians Mark Spitz, Ian Thorpe, and Michael Phelps. The SEA SERPENT has not, as yet, competed in the Olympics. 56d. [Place to find IBM] vexed me. “Starts with NY…Is it NY, NY? Or N.Y. St.? Ick. That’s horrible. [long pause] Oh! The NYSE!” I had no idea what 54d: [Cóctel fruit] was going to be, and had “fruit cocktail” stuck in my head instead of “fruity cocktails.” PIÑA is Spanish for pineapple, and the piña colada is a cóctel. Among the less obvious names in the grid are these: 16a. [Actor who turned down the role of Dr. Shepherd on “Grey’s Anatomy”] clues LOWE.

Rob, I presume, and not Chad. 36a. [Kleptomaniac film monkey] is ABU, from the animated Aladdin. 37a. DANTE was a [14th-century Florentine exile]. 3d. The Venerable BEDE is the [Only native Englishman ever named Doctor of the Church by a pope]. Dr. Dre, I presume, is among the few Americans named Doctor of the Church, because he’s not a physician and the “Dr.” bit must’ve come from somewhere, right? 7d. [“Entertaining Mr. Sloane” dramatist] is Joe ORTON. Have any of you read or seen any Orton plays? I know him only from crosswords. The other day, I missed making a note of the abbreviation TCHR in the grid. It’s a solid in-the-dictionary abbreviation, though it does make for an ugly crossword answer. And here it is in the clues today: 38d. [Tchr.’s notation] is ABS., short for “absent.” Meh.

ABS as short for “abdominal muscles” is so much better than an abbreviation for “absent.” I’m thinking the average teacher’s form for recording students’ attendance has such tiny boxes that an A or an X is going to be used rather than a three-letter abbreviation. Stan Newman’s Newsday crossword, “Saturday Stumper” (writing as Anna Stiga) This is two half puzzles for the price of one, what with square 23 and its opposite partner being the only connections between the two halves of the grid. There’s precious little flow between the two sides. I had the lower left half completely filled in and the upper right completely blank. I know this drives a lot of people bonkers. Let’s take a stroll through some clues: 5a. [Shoot shout] is “THAT’S A WRAP!” As in what the director says when the film’s done shooting. 15a, 48d. [Old Line State symbol] clues two answers: the University of Maryland’s Terrapin, or TERP, and Maryland’s state bird, the ORIOLE. 17a. Did you know OKRA was a [Cacao cousin]? Two pods in a pod. 18a.

Northern Illinois isn’t very piny, so PINE NEEDLE as a [Mulch candidate] wasn’t at all obvious to me. 22a. [Cohen of cones] is BEN Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is often served in cones. Got this one through the crossings. 23a. [Vineyard Cup competitor] is a CATBOAT, a type of sailboat I know nothing about. The BOAT part of the answer wasn’t so hard to figure out, but the CAT? Oy. 31a. [Once-fashionable tableware] is MELMAC, made of melamine resin. Also the home planet of TV’s ALF. 35a. [Marine-training subject] clues BAYONET. The sea OTTER above this entry is unrelated. 37a. [Morning moment] feels like a lame clue for SEVEN A.M. What, so SEVEN OH ONE A.M. is the following moment? 56a. DIA is clued with [It means “thoroughly”]. Not a foreign word—a prefix in English words.

First dictionary I checked said only that dia- means “through,” but the unabridged lists several meanings, including “thoroughly, completely,” as in diagnosis. But then the first dictionary tells me the roots of diagnosis are dia/apart + /gignoskein/know. This…is a weird clue. 64a. [Victim of the ’71 “rural purge”] is GREEN ACRES. What, the countryfied shows all went off the air in 1971? Apparently so . Looking at the list of cancelled shows and the shows that replaced them on TV, I gotta say…good call, networks! 1d. [It was used to discover fermium] clues the ATOM BOMB. Such a quaint term. We just call ’em nuclear weapons now. 2d. PEKOE TEA is a [Term popularized by Sir Thomas Lipton]. Lipton = TEA, that part’s easy enough. 7d. [Emmy-winning role of ’67] is AUNT BEE. See also “rural purge,” 1971. 8d. TRE, or “three,” is an [Italian cardinal] number. 13d.

[Debra Messing, in “Garfield: The Movie”] played ARLENE. Waitress character, no? 24d. OLDS, of Oldsmobile fame, was the [Financier of Lansing’s tallest building]. The car company was founded in Lansing. 38d. [Couric succeeded her on “Today”] clues Deborah NORVILLE , who went on to host that daytime tabloid show, Inside Edition. 40d. This is an insane answer. Three words, eight letters—and only one vowel. The [2001 Winter X-Games host] was MT. SNOW, VT. 42d. [American relative] is CHEDDAR cheese. My kid won’t eat American cheese, but he likes cheddar. Sean O'Casey, Irish Playwright, Is Dead at 84 Sean O'Casey, Irish Playwright, Is Dead at 84 Special to The New York Times LONDON, Sept. 18--Sean O'Casey, the Irish playwright, died tonight of a heart attack in Torquay. He was 84 years old. He had lived in the resort town on the southwest coast of England for many years.

The dramatist, long an exile from his native Ireland, died at about 7 P.M., shortly after he was taken to a nursing home. His body will be cremated and details of funeral arrangements will be announced tomorrow. From the bitterness of poverty and from the love of humanity Sean O'Casey created works of drama and prose-poetry that sang of freedom's exuberance and reviled spiritual penury. From earliest days in the drab streets and two-story brick boxes of Dublin slums until his aging years of self-driven British exile amid the red earth and salt air of Torquay, this gaunt fiery writer never abandoned his faith in the dignity of man. For his cause, he spurned neither fight or embrace. But like the tumultuous, passionate sentences that swirled and plunged through his plays, essays, letters and autobiographical works, he was more concerned with poetry than logic; more with shoulder-heaving laughter than with back-bending research. Even in his 80's, looking very much the poor country vicar with his worn tweed jacket, pipe, white hair, ascetic face and steel-rimmed glasses, Mr.

O'Casey continued to call out as hotly as ever to young writers not to be "afraid of life's full-throated shouting, afraid of its venom, suspicious of its gentleness, its valor, its pain and its rowdiness." By then, the man whose plays had touched off riots, whose diatribes had nettled churchmen and atheists, was nearly blind. Still he sought out the restless vigor of the young and enjoyed the laughter and rows of pub and street. "The artist's life," he advised, "is to be where life is, active life, found in neither ivory tower nor concrete shelter; he must be out listening to everything, looking at everything, and thinking it all out afterward." There were many, even among his most ardent admirers, who consistently questioned the infallibility of the O'Casey gift for reason. They would chide him, for instance, for his continued support of the Soviet Union, pointing out that his passion for personal liberty was irreconcilable with the tyranny of the Kremlin. Stubbornly, though, he clung to his belief, dismissing derogatory information as propaganda. Actually, he was quite hazy about political ideologies.

Once, for example, in the early 1950's, he told an American visitor that there were "many millions of Communists in the United States." He explained that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and all who voted for him were Communists. A Communist, said the writer, "is anyone who tries to help humanity." Sharp Characterization But even those who quarreled with what Mr. O'Casey wrote did not doubt the beauty of his prose. Thus, though his internationally famous plays--"The Shadow of a Gunman," "The Plough and the Stars," "Juno and the Paycock" and "Within the Gates"--stirred up storms among spectators and critics, they were read long afterward by many thousands throughout the English-speaking world for their magnificent lines, their sharp characterization and their robust humor. Critics sometimes quibbled about the form of Mr. O'Casey's works, particularly the symbolism of such plays as "Within the Gates," "Cock-a-Doodle Dandy" and "Purple Dust." But they were overwhelmed by the eloquence, imagery and fire of Mr.

O'Casey's writings, particularly in his six autobiographical books that emerged from 1939 to 1955 under the titles of "I Knock at the Door," "Pictures in the Hallway," "Drums Under the Window," "Inishfallen Fare Thee Well," "Rose and Crown" and "Sunset and Evening Star." One critic called the O'Casey style "a great and lovely tide of rhetoric." Mr. O'Casey said his works and arguments had made him "tattered and torn, like a man tossed by the cow with the crumpled horn, but still sparing for defense and a forward blow." Some who had never felt the searing insult of Mr. O'Casey's anger talked warmly of his gentleness, of the soft, lyric brogue that made him, on Broadway or the West End, always a part of Dublin's O'Connell Street. His friends roared as he would recall the pranks of childhood or describe a weekend at Lady Astor's, "feeding off solid silver and sleeping in a room like a stadium." But for those Mr. O'Casey disliked, he showed another side.

Of one man, for instance, he wrote: "He was a pathetic figure, when he talked to one, speckled one's cheeks with spittle, a prying index finger every moment prodding behind a collar a size too large for his neck, seeking something disturbing the upper part of his back; forever adding a spate of useless words to his monstrous diary, given at last to the National Library, when it should have been given to the fire." Attacked Catholic Church Mr. O'Casey not only took on individuals but also groups in his verbal brawls. He called atheists "those who, trying to get rid of God, plant Him more firmly on His throne." And evangelists, he said, were "those preachers who daub the glories of God with mockeries." Though he was fairly general in his resentment of organized religion, he singled out the Roman Catholic Church for special attacks. The importance of his target was just another challenge. He accused George Russell ("A.E."), one of the most influential Irish journalists, of "hopabout, runaway intellectual agitation; a congested mass of nonsense is your nut." Though he almost lost his life in the struggle for Irish freedom, Mr.

O'Casey said of the first Irish President, Eamon de Valera: "There seemed to be no sound of Irish wind, water, folkchant or birdsong in the dry, dull voice." He was particularly savage in assaulting literary ideas he found offensive. Thus, in the early 1930's, when realistic approaches to drama found general favor, he wrote: "The beauty, fire and poetry of drama have perished in a storm of fake realisms. Let real birds fly through the air; real animals roam through the jungle, real fish swim in the sea, but let us have art in the theater. There is a deeper life than the life we see and hear with the open ear and the open eye and this is the life important and the life everlasting. So to hell with so-called realism, for it leads nowhere." Mr. O'Casey's hard path began almost at his birth in Dublin on March 30, 1880. When he was a child, his father died. His eyes were bad and his teachers, by his accounts, had a strong sense of sadism. His brother and sister died when still young.

At the age of 14, he went to work as a laborer. Humiliated by poverty, a Protestant rebel in a Catholic city, his great solace was literature. He would steal books. His love for Shakespeare was one of the forces that drove him to write for the theater. Between 12-hour days at manual labor and nights of plotting Irish rebellion, Mr. O'Casey sampled a good deal of the hunger, anguish and ferocity of the poor of Dublin. At one point, when a charity patient in a hospital, his most vivid memory was that the food was so much better than his usual repasts. After some strong tastes of amateur theatricals the young man decided that writing was the way to express what he had seen, heard and thought of the world. The Abbey Theater, after turning down a few plays, accepted "The Shadow of a Gunman" in 1925. There was some resentment in the audience toward the play, even more toward "Juno and the Paycock." And when "The Plough and the Stars" opened there in 1926 a riot broke out.

But, amid demonstrations and uproar, the play, though interrupted, was finished with what one correspondent described as the "greatest ovation" at that theater. Driven From Ireland By that time, however, the O'Casey penchant for argument had driven him not only from the Abbey Theater but also from Ireland. The board of the theater had refused to do his "The Silver Tassle." In his fury the author berated even W. B. Yeats, a member of the board and a man he greatly respected. Mr. O'Casey never returned to Ireland, though he often became homesick. London, however, lionized the playwright and even tolerated his foibles. He refused, for example, to wear a dinner jacket, preferring his turtle-neck sweater. A dinner jacket, he said, was fit only for the coffin. He wore the sweater even for his church wedding in London in 1927 to Eileen Reynolds. She was an Irish actress who used the name Carey. They had two sons and a daughter. Mr. O'Casey, despite his enormous reputation, earned very little money either from his plays or his books.

An O'Casey Revival In 1956 something of an O'Casey revival began in New York. Paul Shyre, a young actor and writer, wrote and produced adaptations of the O'Casey autobiographies and lesser-known plays. His "I Knock at the Door," done in readings on a bare stage, was a hit both on and off Broadway in 1956 and 1957. He achieved a similar success with "Pictures in the Hallway" in 1956. "Purple Dust" ran for 480 performances during 1957 at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. "Red Roses for Me" in January, 1956, was a sell-out. A musical version of "Juno and the Paycock," written by Marc Blitzstein, was prepared during 1958. Mr. O'Casey's "Drums of Father Ned" was one of the plays selected by the Dublin Theater Festival for the summer of 1958, but it was withdrawn in May. So was a dramatization of James Joyce's "Ulysses," as well as a play by Samuel Beckett.

The Roman Catholic archbishopric in Dublin disapproved of all these, and some other selections. Mr. O'Casey's reaction was typical of him. He banned all his plays from production in any part of the Irish Republic. The ban was in effect the rest of his life, though he did lift it on occasion. Mr. O'Casey explained his feelings behind the ban in an article in The New York Times last Jan. 5. He wrote: "I have lived a troublesome life in Ireland, in my youth hard times in the body, and in my manhood years, a hard time in the spirit. Hardship in my young days taught me how to fight hard, for if that characteristic wasn't developed then, it meant that one became either a slave or a lick-spittle. "So I learned how to resist all aggressive attempts to make me a docile one, and could hit back as hard as he who could hit hardest. This gift (for an earned gift it is) kept within me when I reached the world of thought as it had been in the world of hard labor--at times, I fear, fighting what I thought to be aggression where none was meant.

"Indeed, had I been Adam, I think I should have resisted the angel with his sword of flaming fire that drove him and his Eve from the Garden of Eden." Extended the Ban Last month, Mr. O'Casey extended the ban to the Irish Pavilion at the World's Fair, which had requested his permission to play recorded excerpts from his works. Despite failing eyesight, Mr. O'Casey continued to write until his death. Essays poured out of his portable typewriter from his third-floor flat in Torquay. "The worst of it," he said in an interview last month, "is that I can't see the mistakes I type." To ward off drafts in his later years, Mr. O'Casey took to wearing colored skull caps. They became as much a part of his costume as the familiar turtleneck sweater. The title of his last book of essays, published in 1963, was "Under a Colored Cap." Mr. O'Casey died while Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was filming "Young Cassidy," a movie based on his autobiography. In a sense he wrote his own epitaph in the last of his autobiographical books which he wrote in the third person.

"Here," he wrote, "with whitened hair, desires failing,strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down, and with only the serenity and calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!" "Cock-a-Doodle Dandy: O'casey's Total Theatre" by Pierse, Michael - DQR Studies in Literature, Vol. 56, January 1, 2015 | Online Research Library: Questia Read preview Article excerpt Perhaps the most glaring example of how Irish theatre's stylistic innovation has been obscured in the general run of popular knowledge is the misleading critical reception afforded to one of its most successful practitioners. While Sean O'Casey's three most famous Dublin plays remain staples in the repertoire of Irish theatrical production to this day, his many later, stylistically more experimental works have faded from the Irish stage and attracted relatively scant academic commentary.

The customary assumptions that O'Casey's talent simply atrophied after 1926 - assumptions that obscure the enormity of his complex theatrical career - remain an impediment to the appreciation of later plays, such as Within the Gates (1933), Cocka-Doodle Dandy (1949) and The Drums of Father Ned (1958). In this regard, in the centenary year of 1980, Abbey director Tomás Mac Anna stressed the importance of a broader, more considered perspective regarding O'Casey's oeuvre and in particular regarding the playwright's later "Total Theatre fare".1 Bernice Schrank takes up this point: A popular and pernicious perception of O'Casey's work is that the realistic "Dublin Trilogy" represents the high point of his achievement, and everything after Plough is one long, embarrassingly bloated falling away from his initial greatness.

Despite its popularity, this view is gradually yielding to a more accurate assessment of O'Casey's achievement as a premature practitioner of the art of "total theatre".2 In this essay, I will explore one of the most outstanding examples of this aspect of O'Casey's work, and one for which the playwright himself had, at any rate, great respect. Cock-a-Doodle Dandy was in fact his favourite play, written at a time when Dublin's "slum playwright" had long progressed beyond his common acclamation as a stage realist, towards a new, nonetheless equally politicized, but vibrantly expressionistic aesthetic.3 O'Casey's later dramaturgy, of which Cock-a-Doodle Dandy is the most accomplished example, engages a bewildering array of diverse techniques. In doing so, it also questions standard and staid notions of the relationship between Irish theatre and some of the twentieth century's most vital and daring theatrical developments. Abruptly, but with technical aplomb, this new phase in O'Casey's writing exploded onto the stage with his depiction of the Great War in a stylized, expressive, dream-like form, during the experimental second Act of The Silver Tassie (1928).

Here was an emphatic rejection of conventional realism, and more broadly, of humanity's rationalization of a barbaric conflict and its underlying ideologies, which had resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives. Theatrical convention, which had often indeed facilitated the propaganda of war, was an inadequate tool with which to engage humanity's recent, apocalyptic failures, O'Casey seemed to suggest. Only radically defamiliarizing forms could produce fresh perspectives on what human "civilization" ought to mean.

By the 1930s, O'Casey was arguing that theatre needed to transcend its standard, realist obsessions of subjectivity and "wellrounded" characterization: in the previous decade, Lady Gregory had encouraged and applauded his abilities in this more conventional mould, but now O'Casey declared that if drama must be "gay, farcical, comic or tragical", above all "it must be, not the commonplace portrayal of the trivial events in the life of this man or that woman, but a commentary on life itself'.4 O'Casey thus invoked the politicized aspect of expressionist writing that John Fordham has identified in particular with its proletarian practitioners: their insistence on "the primacy of the social image through its subjective expression", as opposed to realism's classic "dominance of the feeling subject".5 This expressionist thrust guides O'Casey's later stagecraft, with its "emotional" and "intensely moving" unfolding of ideas through "ferocious exaggeration", which stresses social rather than personal dilemmas.

… Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details The New York Times Crossword in Gothic: 10.02.10 — Scream! Saturday, October 2 , 2010 Puzzle by Barry C. Silk, edited by Will Shortz A quartet of long entries are featured in this solid Saturday crossword — BLAST FURNACE (19D. Coke product maker), GOOGLE SEARCH (21A. Producer of hits), NO SUCH AGENCY (9D. Organization nickname that plays off the group’s secrecy) and PRIMAL SCREAM (44A Supposed aid in curing neurosis). Colorfully clued are ADULTS ONLY as “Blue, say” and CALIFORNIA as “Orange’s place“, leading off the ten-letter entries — GET A READ ON (26D. Sense), HAIL CAESAR (55A. Senate cry), MAID MARIAN (27D. Legendary outlaw’s companion), SEAN O’CASEY (2D.

Irish playwright who wrote “Cock-a-Doodle Dandy”, TEN DOLLARS (3D. Value of a U.S. coronet head coin, minted from 1838 to 1907), THREADBARE (51A. Worn). Other — CAPYBARA (50A. Rodent that may weight over 100 pounds), DER / SPIEGEL (37A. With 4-Down, German equivalent of Time), GARBAGE (40D. What’s at your disposal?), INDEBTED (18A. Not settled up), LEMON TART (5A. Tangy treat), OMELETTES (57A. Fare often folded in half), TRADING (34A. Activity for folks in the pits?). Five-letter — Make A CASE for, “Hast thou AN ARM like God?”: Job 40:9, ARRID (22D. “Get a little closer“ brand), ASPER, BALLS, CATER, CLEAR, EGADS, ELUDE, FOXED, LADES, LARAS, MARIA (30A.

She‘s a problem that needs to be solved, in song) , MATTE, MAXIM, PRELL, SPRIG, TROTH (10D. Loyalty). Short stuff — ADE (31D. Commercial ending with Power), ADIT, ANNI, BET, BUDS, DAT, EAU, ENNE, GMT, GOAT, MIL, OFT, PEEP, RAH, RAIN and RANI and RONI (35D. Commercial ending with Pasta), RILL, SSTS, SYS, TAY, THO, TUMS (28D. Product of some relief pitches?) , UNI, USA, UTIL, WARN and WHAM (47D. Big blow)! ———————— Click on image to enlarge. Puzzle available on the internet at THE NEW YORK TIMES — Crossword Puzzles and Games . If you subscribe to home delivery of The New York Times you are eligible to access the daily crossword via The New York Times - Times Reader, without additional charge, as part of your home delivery. Remaining clues — ACROSS: 1. Onetime J.F.K. visitors; 14. Furtive look; 16.

Eastern dignitary; 20. Monthly expense: Abbr.; 24. Like good explanations; 25. Squad booster; 26. Prime meridian hrs.; 29. Lottery mix-up?; 32. Need for des poissons; 33. Its members are represented by stars; 36. Style guru Gunn; 38. Tricked cunningly; 39. Cry of consternation; 41. Part of Awacs: Abbr.; 42. Cellular opening; 48. Show a yellow card, e.g.; 54. Shaft entrance; 56. Chimera, in part; 58. -trix kin. — DOWN: 1. Garnish amount; 5. Takes on cargo; 6. Get around; 7. Cool number?; 8. With regularity, to Whitman; 11. Millennio divisions; 12. Streamlet; 13. It flows from a loch to a firth; 15. Provide courses for; 22. “Get a little closer” brand; 23.

Picnic problem; 29. Ones to hang with; 30. Words to live by; 43. In line with; 44. Alberto VO5 rival; 45. Make ___ for; 46. Newswoman Logan and others; 47. Certain finish; 48. Big blow; 49. R&B SINGER India.___; 51. While, for short; 52. Not dis; 53. Play favorites? Posted by DONALD

Question: Who wrote the Irish classic play "Cock A Doodle Dandy"?
Answer: Sean O'Casey