Fintan Walsh's Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation is a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on contemporary performance and queer dramaturgy in Ireland. His 2010 anthology, Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland, remains a seminal collection of contemporary Irish LGBTQ works. His new book not only continues to document significant queer theatre productions, but also interrogates and theorizes how queer performance, across a variety of media and genres, allows contrapuntal narratives of alienation, institutional oppression, and disenfranchisement to be voiced and heard even as it advocates for a more inclusive, diverse, and representative Ireland. Focusing on work during and immediately following the Celtic Tiger era (1995–2007), the book's rich descriptions serve as a necessary archive of queer performance. In addition, it is an intentionally intersectional examination of how the past twenty years have redefined radically what is thought of as “Irish.” Walsh deftly cites immigration, secularization, consumer trends, and referendums to argue that it is impossible to treat these years as not affecting LGBTQ individuals in Ireland, let alone as not speaking to the needs of and injustices against the LGBTQ population as a whole.
Of course, gay characters and LGBTQ concerns have been a part of Irish theatre for years, and in his lengthy introduction (Chapter 1) Walsh acknowledges significant literary precursors such as Wilde, Kilroy, and McGuinness, as well as more recent gay figures. He also offers a nuanced rebuttal to the myopic observation that contemporary Irish theatre has not responded effectively to the Celtic Tiger era. Queer theatre, Walsh asserts, has provided a multilayered response to the evolution of the Irish economy but has been critically overlooked. Gender and sexuality, he rightly maintains, cannot be separated from issues of class, economic mobility, ethnicity, and national identity.
In the remaining chapters, Walsh considers specific performers and productions so as to document and interrogate queer performance(s). Chapter 2 examines Panti Bliss, Ireland's best-known queer performer and drag artist. Walsh considers some of her most important work, including hosting the Alternative Miss Ireland queer beauty pageant (1987, 1996–2012) as well as the theatrical trilogy In These Shoes? (2007), All Dolled Up (2007), and A Woman in Progress (2009). He considers how her performances are a significant part of the local, national, and international discourse on queer activism, HIV/AIDS, and marriage equality. Walsh's enthusiasm for Panti informs much of the chapter, and his detailed descriptions of performances are helpful in imagining them not just as theatre events but as collective expressions and celebrations of Irish queer aesthetics and identity.
Chapter 3 turns to queer performance in Northern Ireland. Specifically, Walsh considers tensions between modernity and tradition in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The main “performer” examined is former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Member of Parliament Iris Robinson. Walsh considers the scandal in which Robinson was embroiled when she made homophobic remarks on the radio following the beating of gay man Stephen Scott. The salacious details of Robinson's affair and ouster from politics is an interesting read in and of itself. In addition, Walsh analyzes “the rhetorical and embodied management of Iris, and how in many ways this mirrored the cultural regulation of homosexuality in which she was complicit, and which she so forcefully brought to light” (52). The rest of the chapter considers how unionist politics in Northern Ireland has traditionally fought against LGBTQ rights and how contemporary playwrights have complicated constructions of Ulster identity politics with their applications of queer theory.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on queer theatre in Dublin. Chapter 4 considers testimonial performance such as Neil Watkins's one-man show The Year of Magical Wanking (2011) and Veronica Dyas's site-specific In My Bed (2011), both personal accounts of coming out, shame, and healing. Highlighting violence, economic inequality, and the policing of LGBTQ bodies, these works reveal the impact of “Ireland's abusive and shaming approach towards sexuality” (18). Chapter 5 examines work made by young queer performers about the older generation. Applying Carol Martin's category “‘theatre of the real’” (85) to these performances, which borrow from interviews, photographs, video recordings, testimonials, and lived experiences, Walsh considers how they recuperate overlooked queer histories. Works analyzed include Silver Stars (2008), a song cycle by Seán Miller and Brokentalkers about gay men who left Ireland since the 1950s; Amy Conroy's I ♥ Alice ♥ I (2010), about a relationship between sixty-something lesbians; and Una McKevitt's The Big Deal (2011), about transgender women's surgery experiences.
Chapter 6 focuses specifically on two site-specific productions that directly engage with a rapidly transforming Dublin city: Phillip McMahon's Danny and Chantelle (Still Here) (2006), set during the height of the economic boom, and Mark O'Halloran's Trade (2011), set during the bust. Questions of Irish identity and sexuality are tied up in the very immediate remapping and massive development that marked the landscape of North Dublin during the Celtic Tiger.
Chapter 7 looks at two productions directed by Wayne Jordan at the Abbey Theatre, Alice in Funderland (2012) and Tw elfth Night (2014). Walsh begins the chapter with a description of Alice, produced by thisispopbaby, an innovative company dedicated “to both recuperating and evolving queer performance in Ireland” (120). For Walsh, their collaboration with the Abbey theatre heralded a triumphant, if long-awaited, moment of queer theatre finding a home on Ireland's national stage and also the larger embracing of queer theatre in Ireland. Walsh notes that although the two productions differ significantly, both are structured around themes of loss and recovery. In this way, he reads both productions as queer theatre's (and by extension queer identities’) search for home, inclusion, and representation in Irish theatre and Ireland at large.
Walsh concedes that his study of queer performance is confined mainly to productions in Dublin, but throughout his work, he considers how technology, specifically social media and live streams, can and will expand traditional definitions of theatre, theatre audiences, and theatregoing experiences—leading to a more inclusive Ireland and a more representative Irish theatre. All the artists covered in Walsh's study he sees as integral to creating and sustaining politically engaged, community-building theatre in the future. This is important work, and Walsh's contribution is exciting for scholars and practitioners alike.
