The Clearing

by Helen Edmundson

The brilliany original play by a rising young British playwright.

Genres: Plays, Drama

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Helen Edmundson is a British playwright and screenwriter. She has won awards and critical acclaim both for her original writing and for her adaptations of various literary classics for the stage and screen.

Edmundson was born in Liverpool, in 1964. Most of her childhood was spent on the Wirral and in Chester. She studied Drama at Manchester University.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play is good, but not quite what I was expecting. Based on the descriptions of it I had read, I was expecting a play that deals more directly with the Cromwellian genocide in Ireland during the 1650s, but this is a much more personal play largely focused on the interpersonal problems of an inter-sectarian couple--an English husband and an Irish wife. It also largely concerns the transplantation of wealthy land-owners, who were frequently Anglo-Irish (some families having been in Eire for centuries, some more newly arrived). While there are some poor ethnic Irish characters, this isn't really their story. There's a kind of silencing here of the native Irish that I find a bit troubling--it's a bit like telling the story of colonial oppression in India and focusing largely on the problems of Anglo-Indians. That being said, the breakdown of the relationship between Robert and Madeleine (the husband and wife) does give us tremendous insight into the internal destruction of a society being stripped bare, to the point of ethnic cleansing. And of course the figure of Sir Charles Sturman, the provincial governor of Ireland, is a brutally callous and inhumane figure who sees the Irish entirely through a Puritanical zeal (and of course this period and the treatment of Ireland is a rebuke to those today who would argue that Islam is a religion of violence while Christianity is a religion of peace), even admitting that he wishes to do away with transportation, courts, appeals, and any sort of restraint in favor of simply eliminating the Irish as a people. So we do have that figure of the brutal Cromwellian dictator.

[Taff Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would certainly have had a lot more contemporary impact when it was written in the 1990s, yet it remains a dark and powerful reminder of the appalling inhumanity that power and greed have engendered in the past and continue to wreak upon others to this day

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterfully written and absolutely devastating. Edmundson’s dialogue is poetic and beautiful without feeling forced.