Come Here To Me!

In the world of arts and culture, a good name will get you far. So it was for The Pike Theatre in Herbert Lane, with co-founder Alan Simpson remembering:

After much discussion, we fixed on ‘The Pike’, meaning the long pole with a spike on the end, which was used by the Irish insurgents of 1798 to discomfort the slick English cavalry. In other words, we wanted our theatre to be a revolutionary force of small means which, by its ingenuity, would stir up the theatrical lethargy of post-war Ireland.

With seating for just 55 audience members (one British reviewer would recall the audience “Jammed together tight as bricks in a wall, sweating, sticking our elbows into our neighbours, digging our knees into the people in the row in front”) The Pike was hidden away in a Dublin laneway, though what it lacked in size it made for in ambition. While primarily remembered today for a disgraceful raid by Gardaí in May 1957 during a production of The Rose Tattoo, the theatre has a much richer story, bringing the work of respected international playwrights to the stage in Dublin,including Eugène Ionesco, Jean Paul Sarte, Samuel Beckett and others. The theatre hosted the world premiere of Brendan Behan’s The Queer Fellow, a work which had been rejected by the Abbey Theatre.

The Pike was created by Alan Simpson and his wife Carolyn Swift. Both had a history of working with The Gate Theatre of Hilton and MacLiammóir, a theatre which Simpson remembered “brought all the more exciting dramatists of Europe and America to the Dublin stage.” Entering the world of theatre managers themselves, the premises they found in Herbert Lane proved you can do much with little; Simpson recounted “we found a premises which, though not suitable, was just possible – just within our means.” With the outer appearance of a shed,The Pike’s size was something that would be seen both as a pro and con through different eyes. Certainly, it was intimate, and the close proximity of the audience to the stage, and the small size of the stage itself, would impact on The Pike. Speaking in the Dáil at the time of Swift’s passing in 2002, Michael D. Higgins would recount that “The 1950s was an absolute barren place where all the shutters were down”, but that small theatres like The Pike emerged, bringing something new and invigorating to Dublin cultural life.

Despite being housed in a refurbished old Georgian coachhouse,the Pike was more concerned with the contemporary than the past, and stated that “the aim is to stage productions which, for one reason or another, would not be seen in the commercial theatres in the city.” A few things set The Pike apart from its Dublin competitors, including the introduction of late revues, where George Desmond Hodnett (author of the satirical song ‘Take Her Up To Monto’) entertained visitors to the theatre on his piano. “The Follies of Herbert Lane”, packed with humour and performance, filled the tiny little theatre, as revelers made their way home from the pubs of nearby Baggotonia. Actors, including a young Milo O’Shea, made their names before that audience.

Some plays sat better with Dublin audiences than others. Simpson recalled that during performances of Sarte’s Men Without Shadows, “we regularly used to have to bring out female members of the audience in a fainting condition to the lane outside, where they were draped across the bonnets of parked cars, for lack of any better means of dealing with them, sometimes as many as three cars being pressed into service at one time!”

In England, the maverick theatre director Joan Littlewood would identify the talents of Brendan Behan, but in the same way as her Theatre Workshop championed a writer some would rather keep at arms length, The Pike in Dublin was a welcoming institution for Behan. On reading the play which became The Queer Fellow, Simpson recounted that “the construction was loose and in places repetitious, but it was immediately clear to me that here was dialogue that could grip an audience and twist the emotions this way and that, as only O’Casey had done before.” Behan made rehearsals for the play difficult:

As the momentous day drew nearer,the atmosphere became too much for Brendan, and he took solidly to the bottle, appearing at intervals accompanied by some friendly but uncomprehending soak whom he had acquired in his perambulations through the various pubs in the area. The latter, puzzled as to why he had been dragged away from his creamy pint to this strange, cold garage in a back lane, would sit in the auditorium, muttering amiable obscenities,while Brendan dug him in the ribs and repeated again and again, ‘I wrote that!’

To the audience of The Pike, Behan interruptions would sometimes become a feature of actual performances too. There was no such risk with the work of Samuel Beckett. Though a Dubliner, there was a feel of bringing an international work to Dublin in performing Beckett in the theatre.Waiting For Godot had divided opinion when performed in London, Simpson recalling that “the popular press dismissed it as obscure nonsense and pretentious rubbish”, but in Dublin the response was much more favourable. Godot ran, and ran, and ran, breaking all records and becoming the longest continuous run in Irish theatrical history to that point.

The story of the 1957 production of The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams has been well told elsewhere, but unfortunately it has become the primary memory of the Pike Theatre in Dublin. The use of a condom on stage as a prop was enough to cause indignation, and to lead the Pike Theatre into the criminal courts, though as Hugh Oram rightly notes, “the fact that the Pike Theatre put on works by the likes of Brendan Behan and Samuel Beckett became overshadowed by a controversy that to modern eyes seems utterly ridiculous.” One actor in the production later recounted how “I brought a nightdress and a toothbrush with me to the theatre each night, in case I would end up in Mountjoy.”

The play had been met by positive reviews, the Irish Press insisting that “once again, The Pike must be highly recommended for giving Dublin a remarkable piece of theatre”,but that counted for little when the Gardaí arrived, arresting Simpson and bringing him to the Bridewell, where he was formally charged with “presenting for gain an indecent and profane performance.” While the trial would subsequently collapse, it has a real impact on many involved in The Pike, perhaps discrediting the immortal words of Pike writer Brendan Behan, of their being “no such thing as bad publicity, except your obituary.” One outcome of the lunacy was a stifling of creative output, Simpson recounting that “I had, for obvious reasons, to avoid the presentation of any play which could possibly be considered even faintly controversial.”

Writing of 1950s Dublin cultural life, the critic Brian Fallon has maintained that “Undoubtedly, most of the laurels for the decade belong to the gallant little Pike.” Today, no plaque in Herbert Lane marks the spot where a tiny little theatre attempted to reinvent Irish theatre, but closed its doors in 1961. In less than ten years, the little theatre of Swift and Simpson had done so much.