Love is sweeping the country

Frank McGuinness's exploration of sex and sexuality resurfaces in his latest play, Dolly West's Kitchen. But although his compassionate writing endears him to audiences, the Irish religious orthodoxy is less impressed

"All I want from the Catholic church is an apology - a long apology. And I hope they will understand when I refuse to accept it." So says Marco Delavicario, the young Italian-American GI in Dolly West's Kitchen, the latest play by Frank McGuinness.

From his first play The Factory Girls, through Innocence and Carthaginians to Dolly West's Kitchen, (which was described on these pages as the hit of the Dublin Festival), McGuinness has set out to explore the social, political, and personal significance of human sexuality - gay, straight or other. And his work has inevitably brought him into conflict with the virulent puritanism of Irish religious orthodoxy, both Protestant and Catholic. Indeed, he was actually denounced from the altar when Innocence - his play about the life of Caravaggio - opened in Dublin, and the deliberate cruelty of his treatment by the local clergy at his mother's own requiem mass is not easily forgotten.

When the Abbey Theatre's production of McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme toured to the Belfast Opera House, the management arranged for a veteran of the Ulster Division to attend the first night. After the show he was asked for his reaction. He did not hesitate: "There were no fruits at the Somme."

With the notable exceptions of Oscar Wilde and Sir Roger Casement, gay men have been as invisible to Irish history as those invisible soldiers at the Somme. They have also been mainly invisible to the Irish stage. But then, overt sexuality and eroticism have not featured prominently in the Irish repertoire.

One of the more extraordinary aspects of recent events in Ireland has been the collapse of the political power of the Catholic Church after a wave of scandals over child abuse in church-run orphanages and industrial schools. And whatever the battle over divorce and contraception, both now legal in the Republic, the liberalising of anti-gay legislation was achieved with remarkable speed, and brought Ireland into line with Europe... except for the UK that is, a country that, ironically, remains more illiberal and deliberately cruel in its legislation than the Republic.

If McGuinness is courageous in his refusal to ignore the crucial importance of human sexuality, he does have some precedents in the Irish Theatre. The root cause of the famous Abbey Riots over The Playboy of the Western World was moral outrage on the part of an audience already primed by the powerful eroticism of The Well of the Saints. With O'Casey and The Plough and the Stars, the flashpoint came when the tricolour and the flag of the Citizen Army were carried into a pub - a pub where the prostitute Rosie Redmond is canoodling with Fluther Good in the snug. This, of course, was an affront to the nation and to the men of 1916. So they rioted.

Two very remarkable Irish plays were produced in the late Sixties, one at the Gate Theatre and the other at the Abbey. Neither caused a riot. One was Brian Friel's The Gentle Island, the other was Thomas Kilroy's The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche. Both centred on the impact of gay characters on the predominantly straight and religiously orthodox society that was Ireland then. McGuinness directed a revival of Friel's play at the Peacock Theatre in the late Seventies, and he has remained a passionate champion of it to this day.

Whatever their pioneering portrayals of Irish gay men, Friel, Kilroy, and Hugh Leonard and Tom Murphy have all written passionately and comprehensively of straight sexuality. Their collected plays contain some of the greatest roles for women in the Irish repertoire. McGuinness too writes passionately for and about women - his love of the plays of Ibsen could hardly let him do otherwise.

In Dolly West's Kitchen, McGuinness has written about his native Buncrana during the last years of "The Emergency", an event known outside the Republic as the Second World War. The West family live in DeValera's neutral Free State - but 14 miles across the border, in the British Army camps of the newly established statelet of Northern Ireland, the Allies are gathering their forces in the lead up to D-Day.

"Has the invasion begun?" asks Justin, a young officer in the neutral Irish Army, when he arrives home to find that his mother, Rima West, has invited two young GIs into the house. Also with them is Alec, an old friend of the West family, and a particular friend of Justin's sister Dolly. Now a captain in the British Army, Alec is working with the Americans. "You've crossed the Border?" Justin asks the GIs. "Haven't we all?" replies Marco. "Yankee wit," says Justin. "Yankee wisdom," replies Marco.

The "invasion" has indeed begun, the neutral Wests will never be the same again, and neither will Ireland.

Dolly West's Kitchen tells us of the human cost of trying to remain neutral - politically, morally, and emotionally. It presents a vivid image of modern Ireland, and the forces that have shaped it. More than that, it evokes the story of modern Europe itself: how it was saved, and how it may destroy itself again. It's a powerful reminder of what it takes to live and to love in this predatory and mendacious world.

Patrick Mason's production of 'Dolly West's Kitchen' is in preview at the Old Vic, London SE1 (020-7369 1722)