The Gougane Barra Hotel, located near the Ó Buachalla cottage and run by the Lucey family, who remember the couple well, was considered as a potential venue, but a neighbouring field beside the couple's grave proved a more appropriate site. O'Connor's "adaptation is very clear", she says, and he uses the tailor's stories in Cross's book to tell the history of the book itself and its consequences for the lives of the infamous couple. It was Wilmot who had the idea of bringing the play back to its west Cork roots, and Hayes admits that re-setting the production within its own landscape complements the play's function as an oral history.
Ronan Wilmot, who had toured the country as production manager with the indefatigable seanchaí, Eamon Kelly, decided to play the garrulous tailor himself, while professional storyteller and actor Nuala Hayes took on the role of director and, later, of the tailor's cranky wife. THE NEW THEATRE'S interest in producing PJ O'Connor's 1968 stage version of The Tailor and Ansty was rooted in the concept of a homecoming project. However, O'Connor's version of the scandal was told with his own ideological objectives in mind, and as the members of the New Theatre production of The Tailor and Ansty, which begins a nationwide tour next week, have found out, when opinion hardens into received wisdom the subtlety of real-life situations is often lost to posterity. The local clergy forced the controversy into the local community, arriving at the couple's cottage proclaiming that "this book is filthy and your house is filthy" and forcing the tailor to burn the book in his own fireplace.įrank O'Connor, the official authority on the scandal, reported that after this incident the couple were "boycotted" by the local community. Despite his prominent authorial voice, Cross himself disappeared from the debate, and it was Tadhg and Ansty who ended up at the centre of the controversy, condemned not just for the stories themselves but for the values these stories apparently projected about rural Irish life. A collection of the popular stories of a west Cork seanchaí and tailor, Tadhg Ó Buachalla, the book's publication in 1942 provoked a bitter four-day debate in the Senate in which the "sex-obsessed" tailor and his "moron" wife were used as public examples of the "sores of moral leprosy" that threatened to "undermine Christianity" even in the most remote rural areas. The Tailor and Ansty, by Eric Cross, was the subject of one of the most high-profile censorship cases of the 1940s. Between 150 and 170 books were proscribed every year being banned became a literary rite of passage that was almost more important than being published. So many books were sent to the board for review that few were read from cover to cover and some of Ireland's greatest writers found their books banned on the basis of a certain turn of phrase, a single line or a few paragraphs. Members of the public were invited to contribute to the process of moral policing by taking an active part and submitting books they found unsuitable for public consumption. The 1929 Censorship of Publications Act provided an official mechanism for developing the moral conscience of the Irish mind. Reading between the rigidly drawn ideological lines, however, suggests a far more complicated reality.
In their own time they may have offended Free State sensibilities for embodying an unsavoury colonial stereotype, but in recent years historical revisionism has elevated them as victims of de Valera's puritan age. Popular figures of cultural history, Tadhg Ó Buachalla and his wife, Anastasia, are now regarded as authentic figures of Ireland's peasant past: Tadhg's indolence is matched by his eloquence, Ansty's industriousness comes with a quick, contrary tongue - they are real-life counterparts of the characters of JM Synge. Actor Nuala Hayes tells Sara Keating about returning The Tailor and Ansty to its roots. When a shady deal goes awry, Rhys and Fiona must begrudgingly team up to get their due, running into vicious gangsters, cannibalistic bandits, and terrifying wildlife along the way.The 'filthy' stories of a west Cork seanchaí were the subject of a high-profile censorship case in the 1940s. Your choices shape this tale to be uniquely yours, with plenty of unforeseen consequences ranging from hilarious to heart-wrenching.Įxplore the deadly planet of Pandora as Rhys, a company man who aspires to replace the infamous Handsome Jack as the head of the Hyperion corporation, and Fiona, a clever con artist who can talk her way out of almost anything. The beloved, choice-driven narrative adventure through the Borderlands universe is back! Set between the events of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3, Tales from the Borderlands follows two unreliable narrators on a quest borne of greed but destined for greatness.