The Dead School

Synopsis

Ireland of the 70s: crashing headlong into the warring forces of change and tradition. Schoolmaster Raphael Bell is devoted to traditional teaching values, while on the other side, Schoolmaster Malachy Dudgeon loves rock music and makes rules only in order to break them. When these two men and all they represent come together, chaos is only round the corner. The drama dances between the past and the present, and music and song are seamlessly interwoven in this powerful story of the love men leave behind in the pursuit of what they think is life.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 25 February 2010

In adapting his 1995 novel for the stage, Pat McCabe acknowledges the debt The Dead School owes to Tadeusz Kantor’s The Dead Class, that haunting Polish masterpiece of ancient memories of desk-bound childhood.

The Irish equivalent is even more bizarre as it squeezes the mythology of Catholic values in education to near death in the converging stories of an old-fashioned relic, the shambling, violent primary school headmaster Raphael Bell from Cork, and his younger counterpart, Malachy Dudgeon.

In the wake of James Joyce, you’d hardly expect any revisionist denials of the shortcomings in the Dublin education system, but McCabe paints a vivid and shocking picture of submission and warped sentiment, brilliantly captured in the hollowed-out husk of a heart-breaking, stony-faced performance by Sean Campion as Raphael, covered in chalk dust, eaten with emotional inadequacy, flaring into cane-wielding virulence.

“How would you like to be buried with my peop...

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Latest User Review

addicted to theatre - 1 March 2010:

Extraordinary piece of theatre with superb performances throughout. It does take a bit of time for the audience to understand what is going on, but this is thrilling stuff....

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