This prompt feels strange to me, because the last time I was asked to write about how I felt about a play and why, it was a trick question. Going into my personal preferences and reactions lost me practically all the available points on the question. “Which one did you like and why?” is, in the twisted, convoluted world of an English major, an invitation for plot analysis and symbolic nitpicking. Which I’m not going to do here. Because, quite frankly, nobody wants to read that. And besides, I’m writing this on one of the computers in the AmmA Center while Jamie the Computer Wizard tries to bring my laptop back to life. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed, and let me indulge my emotions without analysis.
Of all the plays we’ve read while spending time here in Armagh,Martin Lynch’s The History of the Troubles According to my Da rises up as my favorite. Why? Only partly because of the wildly entertaining lunch we had with Mr. Lynch himself, in which I discovered that to be an Irish writer, you need to surround yourself with fascinating people and not be afraid to inundate total strangers with profanity. Mostly, I loved this play because it made me laugh.
Not that the other plays didn’t, of course. I even laughed a little in Beauty Queen of Leenane, though admittedly that laugh was punctuated with cringing and wincing at the horror of it all. But Lynch embraces the utterly Irish tendency to make a joke out of a serious thing and a serious thing out of a joke. While discussing the pain and violence of The Troubles, Lynch manages to take us on a funny, fabulous ride through the gamut of human existence. We follow a cast of characters who have no idea what’s going on around them and just want to get on with things. They’re all quirky, lost in their own personal problems and verbal ticks, and yet at the same time they’re all mired in the violent political struggle that becomes so idealized by the “heroes” on both sides.
The question I think Lynch was asking here is this: is there such a thing as a hero? And I think he’s answering that question with a resounding “no.” If these recruits to the IRA are war heroes, heaven help us all. They signed up on accident, more or less. Their plan for victory is to kidnap the Queen’s corgis. They take every opportunity to exploit The Troubles as an excuse to go drinking. This is not a play about The Troubles as a broad concept, this is a play about the people who get caught up in modern political events, whether or not they want to.
And it’s laugh-out-loud funny. I know that “lol” has been stripped of all literal meaning thanks to the Internet, but while I was reading this play silently to myself, I actually did it: I lol’d. Plays often come to life more dramatically when staged or at least read out loud, but The History of the Troubles was hilarious even lying on the page, and reading it aloud only added to its charm.
In short, Martin Lynch is fabulous. In large part because we both share a similar desire to kidnap the Queen’s corgis. I was in London before the beginning of this program, and I actually began constructing a battle plan. There’s a note of solidarity between the two of us on that point.
And now, back to Jamie’s office to see what on Earth’s happened to my laptop. Maybe if I kidnap a corgi or two, the Apple store will fix my computer for free?
