Fintan O’Toole’s column in today’s Irish Times serves up a familiar dish: Ireland in the 1980s was grim, grey, and economically hollowed out—but thank God we had theatre. It’s an elegant reflection, soaked in sentiment, and yet reads like a misty-eyed TED Talk for the already converted. Yes, Druid Theatre lit a few flames, but was that really enough to keep an entire generation from boarding the next Ryanair flight to Birmingham?
O’Toole claims that despite a collapsed economy, mass emigration, and the not-so-small matter of violent conflict in the North, we had a reason to stay: Galway’s stages were alive with rebellious verse and Beckettian grimaces. That’s nice, Fintan. But try telling that to the electrician in Longford who couldn’t feed his kids or the nurse in Donegal scraping coins for a boiler repair. “At least we’ve got Tom Murphy at the Town Hall!” doesn’t quite warm the living room.
This is culture as fig leaf—art as anaesthetic. O’Toole confuses resilience with resonance. Just because we produced some world-class theatre doesn’t mean we were a functioning country. The South of Ireland in the 1980s wasn’t just “bloody awful”; it was state-sanctioned stagnation. And no, a poetic monologue about existential despair doesn’t replace stable employment or access to contraception.
Worse still, the column risks mythologising elite spaces. Theatre as resistance? Maybe. But also theatre as a Friday night for the professoriate while the rest of the country tuned into The Late Late and hoped the dole didn’t bounce. It’s a comforting fantasy: that we were saved not by reform or revolution, but by monologues and stage lights.
And let’s talk tone. “Pure possibility,” Fintan writes, describing the cultural bloom amid societal collapse. That’s one way to frame it. Another would be: when you’re broke, disillusioned, and can’t get a job, “possibility” is all you’ve got. A less romantic word might be “desperation.”
Ultimately, O’Toole’s lyrical ode to theatrical resistance offers a rose-tinted, interval-sized view of Ireland’s darkest decade. Yes, the arts flourished. But to say they were the reason to stay is like praising the band while the ship sinks. Beautiful music, sure—but the water’s still rising.
Culture matters. But so do housing, healthcare, and not having to move to Australia. Let’s not confuse applause with progress—or curtain calls with policy change.
And don’t forget the drama, sacrifice and resistance to the British in the North during the 1980s. One-eyed artistic vision doesn’t mean the suffering of your countrymen and women north of the border ceased to exist.
A 100%Jude
O’Toole, like,a lot of the pseudo intellectuals in Dublin 4, haven’t lived in, or experienced, real Ireland, in their lives. The West-Brit mindset is a post-colonial self-loathing but also self-delusional mental illness.
Never understood why you keep reading Fintan the Tool’s fiction Jude!
And now in 2025 we are back to the same miserable existence for the majority. On the surface different reasons but really not – down to FFFG incompetence, corruption and pandering to vested interests at the expense of the oeople.