(I signed up for some Open Threads and decided for each one I’ll take a snapshot of a random shelf and pick one book from the photo to highlight. Please feel free to discuss adjacent books and critique my choice. Books!)

In 1928, Irish playwright Denis Johnston submitted his play Shadowdance to Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, founded in 1904 by such luminaries as W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, and Lady Gregory. However, his play was at first rejected, returned to him with a note from Yeats scrawled across the title page: “The old lady says no.” Undeterred by Lady Gregory’s dismissal of his work, Johnston cheekily retitled the play The Old Lady Says “No!” It premiered the next year at the Gate Theatre.

Set in the early 19th century, The Old Lady Says “No!” is the story of an actor who dreams that he is Robert Emmet (Irish nationalist and revolutionary, hanged for high treason in 1803). In his dream, “Emmet” encounters present-day (early 20th century) Ireland and is forced to reconcile his romantic (pre-independence) vision with (post-independence) modernity. The play — part parody, part homage, part satire, part elegy, and part polemic — represents a larger shift away from realism and towards expressionism and other more experimental forms. It is essentially a play within a play, a disjointed sequence in which the protagonist (an actor portraying Robert Emmet who is accidentally knocked unconscious during the opening scene of the play in which he is starring) dreams that he is Emmet, searching for his lover Sarah Curran in 1920s Dublin. The drama lurches from scene to scene as “Emmet” stumbles across notable Irish figures from Henry Grattan, to Cathleen Ni Houlihan (“Mother Ireland,” here an irreverent, foul-mouthed hag), to literary fellows like Yeats, Joyce, Wilde, and Shaw.

Johnston went on to write, amongst other works, 10 more plays and the libretto Six Characters in Search of an Author (adapted from Pirandello). He also became a BBC war correspondent and film director. His daughter is acclaimed Irish author Jennifer Johnston, who, at 94 years old, is still alive and well in Dublin, the city her father famously describes in The Old Lady Says “No!” as “Strumpet city in the sunset.”

Have a great Night Thread, Avocados!