Frank McGuinness has described Carthaginians as an attempt to celebrate the dead, who are in this case not only the victims of Derry’s 1972 Bloody Sunday but a group of fictional traumatised survivors and witnesses testifying to the distressing, bewildering experience of living in a disjointed, violent world of seemingly defunct history, mythologies and symbols. This ritual of celebration is also one of the most musical plays of McGuinness’s in which music and songs are meant to heal the dead both on stage and in the audience. To this effect, the dramatist resorts to Dido’s dirge, from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, to both lyricise and distance the characters’ grief. Besides, his analytical and thematic treatment of songs throughout the play contributes to dramatising a cultural crisis of symbolical representation and lyrical expression epitomised by the sectarian strife in Derry. To resolve that representational crisis, McGuinness relies ambivalently on the theatre space as an imaginative choral space of celebration.
Frank McGuinness a décrit Carthaginians comme une tentative de célébration des morts, morts qui ne sont pas seulement les victimes du Bloody Sunday de 1972 à Derry mais un groupe fictif de survivants et témoins traumatisés faisant part de leur détresse et de leur confusion extrême liées au fait de vivre dans un monde violent, hors de ses gonds, où l’histoire, les mythologies et les symboles semblent avoir vécu. Ce rite de célébration est aussi une des pièces les plus musicales de McGuinness dans laquelle la musique et les chansons ont vocation à aider à ressusciter les morts sur scène et dans la salle. À cet effet le dramaturge recourt à la lamentation de Didon, du Didon et Énée de Henry Purcell, pour rendre une expression à la fois lyrique et distanciée de l’affliction touchant les personnages. De plus, son traitement analytique et thématique des chants dans l’ensemble de la pièce contribue à la dramatisation d’une crise de la représentation symbolique et de l’expression lyrique, le conflit sectaire à Derry apparaissant comme une manifestation typique de celle-ci. Pour résoudre cette crise de la représentation, McGuinness se fie, non sans ambivalence, au théâtre en tant qu’espace imaginatif et choral de célébration.
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Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians, first performed at the Peacock Theatre in 1988, tells the story of three women and four men from the Catholic community of Derry holding a week-long vigil in Derry’s Creggan graveyard. Years after Bloody Sunday,1 which they all witnessed as civil rights marchers, they are waiting for the dead to rise. It quickly turns out that the dead to be resurrected are themselves, the mourners, showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder such as survivor guilt, suicidal inclinations, feelings of foreshortened life and death in life.2 Their funereal vigil does not only enable them to assert an imperious desire for justice and vent their grudges against the oppressive culture of sectarian hatred and bigotry within their own community, but is also a therapeutic ritual: they try to liven up by telling jokes and singing, playing quiz games, partying and acting in The Burning Balaclava, a camp play-within-the-play parodying stereotyped Troubles drama.3 Eventua...
Matthieu Kolb has been teaching at the université de Haute Bretagne (Rennes II) since 1997. He completed his PhD thesis, Espaces dramatiques et postdramatiques dans le théâtre de célébration de Frank McGuinness [Dramatic and Postdramatic Spaces in Frank McGuinness’s Theatre of Celebration], at the université de Caen – Basse-Normandie in 2012. His research focuses on contemporary Irish theatre.
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KOLB, Matthieu. Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians: A Choral Theatrical Celebration of the Dead In: Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand [online]. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2013 (creato il 28 mars 2024). Disponibile su Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/puc/7099?nomobile=1>. ISBN: 978-2-84133-793-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.puc.7099.
Kolb, M. 2013. Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians: A Choral Theatrical Celebration of the Dead. In Dubost, T., & Slaby, A. (Eds.), Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen. doi:10.4000/books.puc.7099
Kolb, Matthieu. “Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians: A Choral Theatrical Celebration of the Dead”. Dubost, Thierry, e Alexandra Slaby. Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2013. (pp. 191-207) Web. <http://books.openedition.org/puc/7099?nomobile=1>.
DUBOST, Thierry (dir.) ; SLABY, Alexandra (dir.). Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand. Nouva edizione [online]. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2013 (creato il 28 mars 2024). Disponibile su Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/puc/7072?nomobile=1>. ISBN: 978-2-84133-793-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.puc.7072.
Dubost, T., & Slaby, A. (Eds.) 2013. Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen. doi:10.4000/books.puc.7072
Dubost, Thierry, e Alexandra Slaby, ed. Music and the Irish Imagination: Like a Language That We Could All Understand. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2013. Web. <http://books.openedition.org/puc/7072?nomobile=1>.
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