'Macbeth' as Gaeilge - Siobhan McKenna and the Bard

 

As the literary world salutes William Shakespeare on his birthday today, these items from the Theatre collections of the James Hardiman Library here at NUI Galway show the works of the Bard were never far from the stages of the West.

[James Hardiman Library Archives,

Siobhan McKenna Papers, T20/368]

From 16th to 23rd November 1941 Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, the Irish language theatre based in Galway, staged a production of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Translated by S.L O Suilleabhain and directed by Walter Macken, it had been planned that the Taoiseach, Eamonn de Valera, would have attended the opening night. Established in 1928, An Taibhdhearc had found a new lease of life from 1939 with the appointment of Walter Macken as director, who also took the lead in this play. Macken is one of the best loved writers, novelists and literary drivers from the West and his immense contribution is evident throughout the papers and archives An Taibhdhearc. (Full catalogue here)

Siobhan McKenna had just started her Arts degree in University College Galway and had acted in An Sciursa Bhan by Karl Capek in the previous June and in An tImpire Mac Seoin by Eugene O'Neill in September, but this production of 'The Scottish Play' was her first major role with the theatre. Later, when Siobhan went for auditions in the Abbey in 1945, Ernest Blythe asked her for an impromptu speech in Irish; it was, in fact, one from this role she performed. 

[James Hardiman Library Archives,

Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe Collection, T1/D/76.]

 



[James Hardiman Library Archives,

Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe Collection, T1/D/76.]

McKenna, a fine Shakesperian actor, spent a season at Stratford-on-Avon in 1952. She played a captivating Viola in ‘Twelfth night’, directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie (qv) at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in 1957, and a one-woman Hamlet in the manner of Sarah Bernhardt off Broadway in 1957, which critics panned; but her Lady Macbeth, opposite Jason Robards, at Harvard University in 1959 was of star quality, ‘putting in the greatest mad scene seen in the U.S. since Callas's Lucia di Lamermoor’ (Time).

Extensive records are present in the papers of Siobhan McKenna on her time spent in Stratford-on-Avon and indeed on her personal life and professional career in general. The full catalogue can be seen here.