Possession: Teresa Deevy’s Táin story brought to life
Queen Medb’s quest for material gain gets told via Amanda Coogan's chamber opera.
Project Arts Centre - Upstairs, Dublin
★★★☆☆
One thing that can be said about Queen Medb: she liked turning things into a competition. When the mythological queen compares her wealth to that of her husband, she discovers he is richer by the value of a white bull – an impossibly fertile, strong (and seemingly, according to lore, misogynistic) bovine. Determined to increase her assets, and exceed her spouse’s net worth, she plots to steal a similarly impressive animal, setting in motion an epic poem of jealousy, greed and destruction.
Of all the versions of the Táin, one that has been ignored is Teresa Deevy’s intriguing plot description for a ballet titled Possession. Written sometime between 1941-1956, following a prolific sequence of plays for the Abbey Theatre (a working relationship that came to an abrupt halt following a change of management at the venue), and at a moment when the playwright’s career risked being derailed, a dance performed to music is all the more surprising considering Deevy was deaf.
Director Amanda Coogan and the Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, fluent in bringing eloquent movement to Irish Sign Language, recognise that sections of Deevy’s plot description, with its poetic reports from a violent battlefield, could be animated as a libretto. In their chamber-opera version of Possession, the Project Arts Centre’s auditorium has been transformed into a kind of darkly surreal army camp, enclosed by canvas tent-drapes. Deevy is seen in one corner, in Alvean Jones’s scholarly appearance, writing at a desk.