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The Shadow of a Gunman
The Shadow of a Gunman, drama in two acts by Sean O’Casey, performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1923 and published in 1925. Originally titled “On the Run,” it was the fifth play O’Casey wrote but the first to be produced. The comic-tragic play is set in the tenement slums of Dublin in 1920 amidst guerrilla fighting between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Black and Tans of the British police force.
The plot concerns the poet Donal Davoren, whose neighbours think he is an IRA hero. He shares an apartment with the peddler Seumus Shields. One day Mr. Maguire, another peddler and a real IRA gunman, leaves a briefcase containing explosives with them. When Maguire is shot and the Black and Tans raid the apartment, the pair are saved by Minnie Powell, an admirer of Davoren, who removes the case but is captured. Ironically, she is killed when the IRA ambushes the police vehicle that is transporting her to prison.
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Sean O'Casey…Abbey Theatre in Dublin produced
The Shadow of a Gunman(1923), set during the guerrilla strife between the Irish Republican Army and British forces. In 1924 the Abbey staged Juno and the Paycock,his most popular play, set during the period of civil war over the terms of Irish independence.…
Abbey Theatre, Dublin theatre, established in 1904. It grew out of the Irish Literary Theatre (founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, and devoted to fostering Irish poetic drama), which in 1902 was taken over by the Irish National Dramatic Society, led by W.G. and…
Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army (IRA), republican paramilitary organization seeking the establishment of a republic, the end of British rule in Northern Ireland, and the reunification of Ireland. The IRA was created in 1919 as a successor to the Irish Volunteers, a militant nationalist organization founded in…