Harry Heegan (Ronan Raftery) football hero, drinks from the Silver Tassie, on the day he returns to the front. With him goes Teddy Foran (Aidan Kelly). In O'Casey's extraordinary, expressionistic second act, an exploding shell paralyses Harry from the waist down, while Teddy loses his sight. Howard Davies' striking production at The National, sees the two end up in Act 4 at an Armistice Day Celebration dance, Dublin. In pieta-style, each intones O'Casey's savage prose-poetry, against the background of dancing figures and up-beat music; ultimately the blind man leads away the cripple. The Silver Tassie is more than the sum of its parts: with a nod to vaudeville, farce it heralds Beckett's clowns and Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop's 'Oh What A Lovely War!' in satire and presentation. Ghosts from O'Casey's highly successful Dublin Trilogy, set against Ireland's civil war, also linger. The Silver Tassie pre-figures these events; yet the question of nationalism, and its practical reality, lies at the heart of his writing.
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