Reviewed by:

• The Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes by José Lanters
• Julieann Veronica Ulin

When Thomas Kilroy’s The Death and Resurrection of Mr. Roche premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1968, it was identified by one reviewer as “the first play by an Irish writer in which the title role is that of a homosexual” (83). Almost a decade later, another reviewer noted that Tea and Sex and [End Page 259] Shakespeare (1976) had crossed another barrier, this time on Ireland’s national stage: “The word ‘sex’ has appeared for the first time in an Abbey play” (104). Over the half century of drama that forms the subject of The Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes, José Lanters demonstrates that Kilroy repeatedly met the challenge he issued in his 1959 manifesto “Groundwork for an Irish Theatre”: to confront the “painful, sometimes tragic problems of a modern Ireland” through an engagement with modern theatrical forms and “the experiments and advances of modern stage-craft.”

Anchored by extensive archival research, Lanters captures the range of theatrical forms through which Kilroy explores Irish subjects and connects “the world to the Irish stage, and Irish theatre to the world” (232). Lanters interprets Kilroy’s willingness to seek out forms and influences beyond Irish borders as a rejection of the extremist and absolutist positions held by many of his characters. In The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas tells Constance that “there are no absolutes except in the desperate imagination of men and women” (134). Kilroy’s drama places those possessing this “desperate imagination” at its center, while never losing sight of the consequences of such vision for those around them. Kilroy’s relentless probing of characters in search of “the impossible, perfect performance” (Rabe in The Madame MacAdam Travelling Theatre) (qtd. in Lanters 69), work of art (Nell in The Shape of Metal), or beauty (Wilde in The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde), and the inhuman separation that such a quest incurs, forms the key focus of Lanters’s study.

Lanters’s book is organized into three parts— ”Nationalism and Identity,” “Gender and Sexuality,” “Art and Mysticism”—although this structure does not preclude substantial attention paid to each of these themes throughout. Indeed, Lanters’s analyses of the plays that chronologically bookend the study, The Death and Resurrection of Mr. Roche and the Pádraig Pearse monologue that Kilroy contributed to a commemorative celebration of the 1916 Easter Rising, foreground the repression and self-loathing inculcated by Ireland’s rigid prohibitions around gender and sexuality. Kilroy’s plays repeatedly show the psychological costs of sectioning off parts of one’s humanity under the pressure of performance: uniforms become costumes enabling erasure of the self and violence to others (Double Cross, The Madame MacAdam Travelling Theatre), stages proliferate onstage (Talbot’s Box, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde), and puppets force a recognition of the limitations of human agency (also Constance Wilde). Across his work, wardrobes, suitcases, boxes, and rooms in basements and boarding houses fail to enclose the secret personal, marital, or national fracturing within the outwardly homogenous whole. The confrontation with what lies within these literal or imagined containers—Kelly’s confession in The Death and Resurrection of Mr. Roche that “I let [Mr. Roche] handle me,” the writer Brian’s opening of a suitcase containing a “naked, dead infant form” in Tea and Sex and Shakespeare, Constance Wilde’s brave recognition of the “corrupting childhood incident that constituted her secret ‘fall’”—represent a central preoccupation of Kilroy’s illuminated by Lanters (93, 115, 134).

The numerous challenges posed by Kilroy’s “serious and demanding theatrical fare” in terms of staging and his openness to collaboration make Lanters’s identification of his borrowings from epic theatre (The O’Neill), surrealism (Tea and Sex and Shakespeare), Kabuki and Bunraku theatre (The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde), Brecht (Talbot’s Box), and Artaud (Blake), and her attention to the various productions of his work all the more valuable (59). Her extensive knowledge of Kilroy’s archive allows her to recover his unconscious or...

审核人：

• 托马斯·基尔罗伊剧院：何塞·兰特斯 (José Lanters)没有绝对
• 朱莉安·维罗妮卡·乌林

1968 年，托马斯·基尔罗伊 (Thomas Kilroy) 的《罗奇先生的死与复活》在都柏林戏剧节首映时，一位评论家认为它是“爱尔兰作家的第一部以同性恋者为主角的戏剧”(83)。差不多十年后，另一位评论家指出茶与性和 [End Page 259] 莎士比亚(1976) 跨越了另一个障碍，这次是在爱尔兰的国家舞台上：“‘性’这个词第一次出现在修道院的戏剧中”（104）。半个多世纪的戏剧构成了托马斯·基尔罗伊剧院的主题：没有绝对，何塞·兰特斯证明基尔罗伊一再应对他在 1959 年宣言“爱尔兰剧院的基础工作”中提出的挑战：通过参与现代戏剧形式和“实验和现代舞台工艺的进步。”

Lanters 以广泛的档案研究为基础，捕捉了 Kilroy 探索爱尔兰主题的各种戏剧形式，并将“世界与爱尔兰舞台、爱尔兰戏剧与世界联系起来”（232）。兰特斯将基尔罗伊寻求超越爱尔兰边界的形式和影响的意愿解释为拒绝他的许多角色所持有的极端主义和绝对主义立场。在康斯坦斯·王尔德的秘密秋季，阿尔弗雷德·道格拉斯勋爵告诉康斯坦斯，“除了男人和女人绝望的想象之外，没有绝对的东西”（134）。基尔罗伊的戏剧将那些拥有这种“绝望的想象力”的人置于其中心，同时从未忽视这种愿景对周围人的影响。基尔罗伊不懈的寻找“不可能的，完美的表现”（拉贝中的字符探测的夫人麦克亚当旅行剧院）（QTD。在兰特斯69），艺术作品（内尔在金属的形状），或美容（王尔德的康斯坦斯·王尔德的秘密坠落），以及这种任务所导致的非人分离，构成了兰特斯研究的重点。

兰特斯的书分为三个部分——“民族主义与身份”、“性别与性”、“艺术与神秘主义”——尽管这种结构并不排除对这些主题中的每一个都给予足够的关注。事实上，兰特斯对按时间顺序结束研究的戏剧、罗氏先生的死与复活以及基尔罗伊为纪念 1916 年复活节起义所做的帕德莱格·皮尔斯独白的分析，突出了爱尔兰僵化所灌输的压抑和自我厌恶。对性别和性行为的禁令。基尔罗伊的戏剧反复展示了在表演压力下割裂一部分人性的心理代价：制服变成了服装，能够抹除自我并对他人施加暴力（双十字，麦克亚当夫人旅行剧院），舞台上的舞台激增（塔尔博特的盒子，康斯坦斯王尔德的秘密堕落），而木偶迫使人们认识到人类代理的局限性（康斯坦斯王尔德）。在他的作品中，衣橱、手提箱、盒子和地下室和寄宿公寓的房间未能将个人、婚姻或国家的秘密分裂封闭在外表同质的整体中。与这些真实的或想象的容器中的东西的对抗——凯利在罗奇先生的死与复活中坦白说“我让 [先生。Roche]处理我，”作家布赖恩打开一个手提箱，里面装着《茶与性》和莎士比亚中“赤裸的、死去的婴儿”，康斯坦斯王尔德勇敢地承认“构成她秘密'堕落'的腐败童年事件” - 代表了兰特斯（93, 115, 134）照亮的基尔罗伊的核心关注。

基尔罗伊的“严肃而苛刻的戏剧票价”在舞台和他对合作的开放态度方面带来的众多挑战，使兰特斯确定了他从史诗剧（奥尼尔）、超现实主义（茶与性和莎士比亚）、歌舞伎和文乐中的借用剧院（康斯坦斯王尔德的秘密坠落）、布莱希特（塔尔博特的盒子）和阿尔托（布莱克），以及她对他作品的各种作品的关注更有价值（59）。她对 Kilroy 档案的广泛了解使她能够恢复他的无意识或...