Marina Carr's "Heap of Broken Mirrors": The Mai (1994)

Abstract

After writing several plays that showed great promise but were clearly derivative, especially of Samuel Beckett, Marina Carr arrived dramatically with the well-conceived, riveting The Mai in 1994. Her next play commissioned by the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, Portia Coughlan (1996) also garnered many honors and a loyal following. But with the "Midlands Gothic" of By the Bog of Cats (1998) something appeared to go dreadfully wrong. Carr had begun to substitute rhetoric and violence for her formerly carefully plotted acts and well-developed characters. This unfortunate tendency holds complete sway over the stage Irish, melodramatic, over-wrought Irish kitchen drama, On Raftery's Hill (2000). With On Raftery's Hill a new assessment of Marina Carr's meteoric rise in Dublin and international theatre appears warranted, even required.