Da (play)
Encyclopedia
Da is a 1978 comedy
play by Irish
playwright
Hugh Leonard
.
NOTE: Performed by the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane Australia in 1975.
The play had its New York City premiere at the off-off-Broadway
Hudson Guild Theatre in 1978, and this production transferred to Broadway
shortly after the completion of its run. It was directed by Melvin Bernhardt
and produced on Broadway by Lester Osterman, Marilyn Strauss and Marc Howard. It opened at the Morosco Theatre
on 1 May 1978 and closed on 1 January 1980 after 697 performances. The scenic design was by Marjorie Kellogg, the costume design by Jennifer von Mayrhauser, and the lighting Design by Arden Fingerhut. The original cast included Barnard Hughes
as Da, Brian Murray as Charlie Now, Lois De Banzie
as Mrs. Prynne, Mia Dillon
as Mary Tate, Sylvia O'Brien
as Mother, Lester Rawlins
as Drumm, Richard Seer as Young Charlie, and Ralph Williams as Oliver.Brian Keith
replaced Barnard Hughes towards the end of the Broadway run, when Hughes went out on a National Tour across the US and Canada. It won 1978 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play, the 1978 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Best Play and the 1978 Tony Award
for Best Play.
, County Dublin
, in 1968. Later, there are numerous flashback
s to times and places remembered from Charlie's youth.
The play is largely autobiographical
: its protagonist, an expatriate writer named Charlie, represents Leonard himself. The play deals with Charlie's relationships with the two father figures in his life: "Da" (an old-fashioned Irish nickname meaning "Daddy" or "Papa"), his adoptive
father, and Drumm, a cynical civil servant who becomes his mentor.
Charlie, a writer who's been living in London for many years, returns to his boyhood home in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, after the death of his adoptive father. He finds that the house is filled with ghosts, of his parents and of his younger self. Charlie talks and interacts with all the ghosts, relives important moments from his youth, and comes to grips with his complicated feelings for his adoptive parents. Through Charlie's conversations and interactions with the ghosts in his home, we see both why he loved his parents and why he was so eager to leave them far behind.
Charlie's family was not dysfunctional or abusive. On the contrary, Charlie's parents adored him, and made great sacrifices to give him a good education. His Da, a gardener for a rich Anglo-Irish family, was kind and patient, but also woefully unsophisticated and lacking in ambition. Charlie loved Da, but was also embarrassed by him, and felt guilty for this embarrassment. Charlie was an illegitimate child at a time when this carried a heavy stigma in Catholic Ireland. Though Da accepted Charlie fully, Charlie always felt like an outsider, heavily indebted to Da. Moreover, Charlie could never find a way to repay Da, or even fully express his love and gratitude.
The genial, undemanding Da was the polar opposite of Charlie's other father figure, Drumm, a high-level civil servant. Since Drumm was one of the few prosperous, educated Irishmen in the vicinity, Charlie's parents hoped he could find Charlie a job. In 1945, they invited Drumm to their home to introduce him to 17 year old Charlie. The introduction went disastrously, as Da made a series of foolish, embarrassing statements (Da believed that a German victory in World War II was imminent, and he was plainly rooting for this outcome). Charlie was humiliated, and was astonished to learn that, despite everything, Drumm had actually taken a liking to him.
Drumm was intelligent, shrewd, and very pessimistic. He saw Charlie as the son he never had, and offered him the unsentimental advice to regard his Da as his enemy, someone who'd hold him back from succeeding in life. Drumm advised Charlie to emigrate from Ireland, which was no place for an ambitious young man. However, Charlie instead took a job as Drumm's clerk. He imagined the job would be only temporary, but he ended up working for Drumm for 14 years. Like his Da, Charlie kept an unprestigious, low-paying job far longer than he ever intended to.
In the late Fifties, as Charlie began to experience success as a writer, he unthinkingly snubbed Drumm in public; Drumm never forgave this crime, and turned against him. About the same time, Da's employers sold their home, leaving Da unemployed. They gave him a tiny pension and, as a parting gift, a tacky paperweight made from dozens of discarded eyeglasses. Da received the gift as a grand honor, which only increased Charlie's disdain for his father, a man who felt privileged to receive a worthless knickknack, so long as it came from "the Quality" upper classes.
Soon after, Charlie moved to England with his fiancée, and his adoptive mother died. Charlie visited Da regularly, giving him a few pounds for spending money, and begging the old man to come live with him in England. Da always refused, which hurts Charlie more than the old man could have realized.
After Da's death, Charlie receives a visit from Drumm, now an elderly man himself. Drumm still bears some ill will toward Charlie, but has been asked by Da to make sure that Charlie receives his inheritance. To Charlie's horror, the inheritance turns out to be the paperweight made of eyeglasses, and an envelope containing all the spending money Charlie had ever given to his Da.
Charlie is forced to accept that he could never repay his father. In fact, Da adored him, and selflessly gave him his entire legacy: the money and the paperweight. Charlie berates his father's ghost, pledging to leave Ireland forever, outraged that that Da never accepted any help, and saddened that Da refused to move to England. The ghost decides to make up for lost time, and come back to England with Charlie. As the play ends, Charlie leaves his house with the ghost following him. His Da will always remain a powerful presence in his life.
in the role without his being forced to attempt a British or Irish accent. Playwright Hugh Leonard had a cameo in the film as one of the pallbearers carrying the coffin of Charlie's father.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
play by Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Hugh Leonard
Hugh Leonard
Hugh Leonard was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote more than 18 plays, two volumes of essays and two autobiographies, one novel and numerous screenplays and teleplays, as well as writing a regular newspaper column.-Life and...
.
NOTE: Performed by the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane Australia in 1975.
The play had its New York City premiere at the off-off-Broadway
Off-Off-Broadway
Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...
Hudson Guild Theatre in 1978, and this production transferred to Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
shortly after the completion of its run. It was directed by Melvin Bernhardt
Melvin Bernhardt
Melvin Bernhardt is an American stage and television director. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, and much of his work has been in the New York City area. He is known for his productions of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Da, and Crimes of the Heart...
and produced on Broadway by Lester Osterman, Marilyn Strauss and Marc Howard. It opened at the Morosco Theatre
Morosco Theatre
The Morosco Theatre was a legitimate theatre located at 217 West 45th Street in the heart of the theater district in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States....
on 1 May 1978 and closed on 1 January 1980 after 697 performances. The scenic design was by Marjorie Kellogg, the costume design by Jennifer von Mayrhauser, and the lighting Design by Arden Fingerhut. The original cast included Barnard Hughes
Barnard Hughes
Bernard Aloysius Kiernan “Barnard” Hughes was an American actor of theater and film. Hughes became famous for a variety of roles; his most notable roles came after middle age, and he was often cast as a dithering authority figure or grandfatherly elder.-Personal life:Hughes was born in Bedford...
as Da, Brian Murray as Charlie Now, Lois De Banzie
Lois de Banzie
Lois de Banzie is an American stage, film, and television actress. De Banzie is best known for her Drama Desk Award winning and Tony Award nominated performance in Paul Osborn's play Morning's at Seven. Her other Broadway credits include The Octette Bridge Club, Da, and The Last of Mrs...
as Mrs. Prynne, Mia Dillon
Mia Dillon
Mia Dillon is an American actress.Born in Colorado, Dillon graduated from Marple-Newtown Senior High School in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. She made her Broadway debut in Hugh Leonard's Da in 1978...
as Mary Tate, Sylvia O'Brien
Sylvia O'Brien (actress)
Sylvia O'Brien was a Dublin-born actress and singer.Little is known of her personal life, but she may have hailed from the Ascendancy that largely ceased to exist following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, following the Irish War of Independence.-Career:She made her way to New...
as Mother, Lester Rawlins
Lester Rawlins
Lester Rawlins was an American stage, screen, and television actor.Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Rawlins appeared in off-Broadway productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Winterset, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Nightride, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for...
as Drumm, Richard Seer as Young Charlie, and Ralph Williams as Oliver.Brian Keith
Brian Keith
Brian Keith was an American film, television, and stage actor who in his four decade-long career gained recognition for his work in movies such as the 1961 Disney family film The Parent Trap, the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and the 1975 adventure saga The Wind and...
replaced Barnard Hughes towards the end of the Broadway run, when Hughes went out on a National Tour across the US and Canada. It won 1978 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play, the 1978 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Best Play and the 1978 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Play.
Characters
- Charlie Tynan – a middle-aged writer
- Oliver – Charlie's childhood friend
- Da (Nick Tynan)– Charlie's recently deceased adoptive father
- Mother (Maggie Tynan) – Charlie's long-deceased adoptive mother
- Young Charlie – Charlie as a boy and as a young man
- Drumm – Charlie's employer and mentor
- Mary "The Yellow Peril" Tate – a young lady with a low reputation
- Mrs. Prynne – Da's old employer
Plot
The play is Initially set in Charlie's old home in DalkeyDalkey
Dalkey is suburb of Dublin and seaside resort in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an important port during the Middle Ages. According to John Clyn, it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century...
, County Dublin
County Dublin
County Dublin is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Dublin Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Dublin which is the capital of Ireland. County Dublin was one of the first of the parts of Ireland to be shired by King John of England following the...
, in 1968. Later, there are numerous flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s to times and places remembered from Charlie's youth.
The play is largely autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
: its protagonist, an expatriate writer named Charlie, represents Leonard himself. The play deals with Charlie's relationships with the two father figures in his life: "Da" (an old-fashioned Irish nickname meaning "Daddy" or "Papa"), his adoptive
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
father, and Drumm, a cynical civil servant who becomes his mentor.
Charlie, a writer who's been living in London for many years, returns to his boyhood home in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, after the death of his adoptive father. He finds that the house is filled with ghosts, of his parents and of his younger self. Charlie talks and interacts with all the ghosts, relives important moments from his youth, and comes to grips with his complicated feelings for his adoptive parents. Through Charlie's conversations and interactions with the ghosts in his home, we see both why he loved his parents and why he was so eager to leave them far behind.
Charlie's family was not dysfunctional or abusive. On the contrary, Charlie's parents adored him, and made great sacrifices to give him a good education. His Da, a gardener for a rich Anglo-Irish family, was kind and patient, but also woefully unsophisticated and lacking in ambition. Charlie loved Da, but was also embarrassed by him, and felt guilty for this embarrassment. Charlie was an illegitimate child at a time when this carried a heavy stigma in Catholic Ireland. Though Da accepted Charlie fully, Charlie always felt like an outsider, heavily indebted to Da. Moreover, Charlie could never find a way to repay Da, or even fully express his love and gratitude.
The genial, undemanding Da was the polar opposite of Charlie's other father figure, Drumm, a high-level civil servant. Since Drumm was one of the few prosperous, educated Irishmen in the vicinity, Charlie's parents hoped he could find Charlie a job. In 1945, they invited Drumm to their home to introduce him to 17 year old Charlie. The introduction went disastrously, as Da made a series of foolish, embarrassing statements (Da believed that a German victory in World War II was imminent, and he was plainly rooting for this outcome). Charlie was humiliated, and was astonished to learn that, despite everything, Drumm had actually taken a liking to him.
Drumm was intelligent, shrewd, and very pessimistic. He saw Charlie as the son he never had, and offered him the unsentimental advice to regard his Da as his enemy, someone who'd hold him back from succeeding in life. Drumm advised Charlie to emigrate from Ireland, which was no place for an ambitious young man. However, Charlie instead took a job as Drumm's clerk. He imagined the job would be only temporary, but he ended up working for Drumm for 14 years. Like his Da, Charlie kept an unprestigious, low-paying job far longer than he ever intended to.
In the late Fifties, as Charlie began to experience success as a writer, he unthinkingly snubbed Drumm in public; Drumm never forgave this crime, and turned against him. About the same time, Da's employers sold their home, leaving Da unemployed. They gave him a tiny pension and, as a parting gift, a tacky paperweight made from dozens of discarded eyeglasses. Da received the gift as a grand honor, which only increased Charlie's disdain for his father, a man who felt privileged to receive a worthless knickknack, so long as it came from "the Quality" upper classes.
Soon after, Charlie moved to England with his fiancée, and his adoptive mother died. Charlie visited Da regularly, giving him a few pounds for spending money, and begging the old man to come live with him in England. Da always refused, which hurts Charlie more than the old man could have realized.
After Da's death, Charlie receives a visit from Drumm, now an elderly man himself. Drumm still bears some ill will toward Charlie, but has been asked by Da to make sure that Charlie receives his inheritance. To Charlie's horror, the inheritance turns out to be the paperweight made of eyeglasses, and an envelope containing all the spending money Charlie had ever given to his Da.
Charlie is forced to accept that he could never repay his father. In fact, Da adored him, and selflessly gave him his entire legacy: the money and the paperweight. Charlie berates his father's ghost, pledging to leave Ireland forever, outraged that that Da never accepted any help, and saddened that Da refused to move to England. The ghost decides to make up for lost time, and come back to England with Charlie. As the play ends, Charlie leaves his house with the ghost following him. His Da will always remain a powerful presence in his life.
Awards and nominations
Awards- 1978 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play
- 1978 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Best Play
- 1978 Tony Award for Best Play
Film adaptation
The film adaptation of 1988 retained Ireland as the primary setting. Playwright Hugh Leonard wrote the screenplay, adding material from his memoir. In addition, he slightly rewrote the main character, Charlie, as an Irishman who had emigrated to the United States many years earlier, to permit casting of actor Martin SheenMartin Sheen
Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez , better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands and Apocalypse Now , and in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.He is considered one of the best actors never to be...
in the role without his being forced to attempt a British or Irish accent. Playwright Hugh Leonard had a cameo in the film as one of the pallbearers carrying the coffin of Charlie's father.