Review Myla Lichtman-Fields Brigid of Kildare - A Full-Length Play (2014)
This review has two parts, one covering the booklet containing the original script, and one of the radio performance, which differs from the original in important ways.
The booklet (original script):
Lichtman-Fields’s play is that rare beast among Brigidine fiction, a piece that, while written for one side of the religious divide or the other, in this case Christian, honours and respects and even celebrates to some degree the other religion, pre-Christian Irish paganism, or Druidism as she envisions it. A most welcome approach!
Lichtman-Fields has done a good job of looking through the lives of Saint Brigit and picking out important moments, then fleshing them out with dialogue and character.
BRIGID: Kildare’ll mark an important link between our Druid traditions and our new world. Here, my Sisters will keep a fire burning day and night to honor those who came before and to help light the way for those who come after us.
pg. 60
This is pure Lichtman-Fields. There is nothing in the early Brigit literature about linking the two worlds.[1] But it is a lovely offering of a long-withheld olive branch between the two paths.
Make no mistake, though, this play will appeal in the main to Christians, particularly Catholics, who enjoy and appreciate the old genre of religious inspiration and education, hagiography – writings of saints’ lives which model the values, beliefs, and understanding of the world that are expected of a great Christian.
Lichtman-Fields has selected elements from different Lives of Saint Brigit and woven them together into a narrative that hangs together rather well. Of necessity, and with some artfulness, she has introduced elements of fiction as well. As in an actual Life (Vita) of a saint, the characters tend to be of types rather than well-rounded humans. In Saints’ Lives, apart from the protagonist, individuals generally show little personality, but simply play the role they are meant to in the story and then leave the stage. The Saint him- or herself will have the most developed personality, but even that is marginal. Lichtman-Fields’s fictional elements bring the characters and their stories more to life and, I think, reflect some of the issues that are important to the author. These include the rights of women, and of girls and boys to learn to read, for instance. The stories selected succeed in both presenting a reasonable conception of Saint Brigit’s life, and conveying the Christian messages important to her Life.
I could see this play being well received in certain settings I have known, such as in a church or a Catholic or other Christian school, and I know a number of nuns who would enjoy it. Because of its strong hagiographical theme, it doesn’t strike me as something that would hold much appeal for most Neopagans, atheists, etc., although I can think of a few who would be interested.
Some mild criticisms, mainly nitpicks:
There is some inconsistency in the historical setting. There are Gregorian chants and plainchant by nuns and stained-glass windows at a time when churches would have been small wattle and daub huts similar to those the Irish were living in at the time. On the other hand, Lichtman-Fields has picked up on other details that aren’t as widely known as the tales in Saint Brigit’s Lives, such as the fact that at this time devoted Christians, those who would be nuns or perhaps monks, did not live in communities of co-religious, but with their families. (Brigit is credited with having been one of the earliest community builders.) She has used this religious isolation as the reason that Saint Brigit built her first community, which works very well in this story.
Although much of the dialogue is given in language that isn’t really appropriate to the time, such as thee and thou (sparsely used), or a tiny bit of stage Irish, in general it flowed well. I anticipated feeling uncomfortable with the soliloquies, particularly since the tone of this play is not of natural speech but of a more formal speech which can sound quite corny if done wrong. For the most part, however, I found myself enjoying those moments of more formal speech. Lichtman-Fields uses dialogue quite nicely to tell the story of Brigit’s father’s sword, her generosity, and the abundance miracles that are attached to her.
One thing that did bother me was the attitude of the Pagans towards the Christians, which was basically hostile and resentful that they were destroying the culture of the land. This does not seem to be how Christianity took root in Ireland. Certainly, at that time Christians were rare, but the nature of the Irish religious outlook made the acceptance of Christianity less of a threat or major concern than it was in other parts of Europe. The assumption of hostility is almost ubiquitous in popular writing about the coming of Christianity to Ireland. It’s quite understandable because it reflects a reality elsewhere that we have heard more about. But it still jerks me out of the willing suspension of disbelief and enjoyment of a story whenever I come across this notion.
Something I liked a lot, which unfortunately was not possible in a radio broadcast, was the way in which the playwright imagined the staging of elements like the passage of time and important moments in the narrative, such as when Saint Brigit was taking the veil and touched the altar – which came to life under her hand.
(BRIGID TOUCHES THE LECTERN and at that moment A FLAME FROM THE HEAVENS extends down upon the wooden lectern which sprouts branches and leaves.)
pg. 25
At the beginning of the play, two or three, possibly four times, Brigit’s half-brother, Bacéne, is mentioned. He is the son of the legitimate wife and the heir of her father's possessions. (Not exactly how inheritance worked in those times, but that is neither here nor there for this work. Complete historical accuracy is not really needed, I think – or even possible – though I would love it, of course...) I was charmed by the use she was making of those two children, and wanted to see how their relationship would evolve. In one of Saint Brigit’s Lives, Bacéne plays an important role in the miracle of her restored eye. He is goading her, saying she will be married whether she likes it or not. In the Life she destroys her own eye to make herself undesirable as a wife and curses him after her sight is restored. For whatever reason, perhaps because it’s a particularly nasty scene, Lichtman-Fields chooses to have Brigit wake up with a horrible scar on her face one morning which is later miraculously cured when she takes the veil. Her brother doesn’t feature in the incident and never appears again. I can understand why the playwright decided to alter the storyline, but the fact that he never really plays a role in her story later on is disappointing after she had begun to develop their dynamic earlier on.
Brigit of Kildare – a full length play has so many things to recommend it. There is gentleness and a lively intelligence and affection for the world and the people in it that manifest throughout. I enjoyed the affection and caring between Brigid and many of the other characters. There was even a little bit of romance, chosen against by Brigit, but attractive to her, nevertheless.
The printed play is available through lulu.com.
The CD (adapted):
I’m unused to the type of speech you find in plays as opposed to movies or television. The importance placed on annunciation and projection makes absolute sense in that venue but sounds awkward to my untrained ears. That said, I think the California Artists Radio Theatre did a good job on the play, choosing good actors and composing an original score that works well with the scripting, moving us smoothly from one scene to the next. I’m pleased that the pronunciation of the Irish names went pretty well.
The opening scene, an introduction written by the director, doesn’t work quite as well as the original script, with occasional uses of the vernacular that don’t quite fit the formal tone of the narrator, and too much information squished into so few sentences. The lengthy introduction gives background on slavery and Patrick, the story of Brigit’s mother, Brigit’s birth and so on. All of this is given to the poet, Lugair, to recite. Lugair doesn’t appear in the original version until the middle of the play, and plays a very small role.
The lines which follow this new introduction, and which originally were said by the archdruid, have been given to the poet, who is seen by the director as less evil than a Druid, if still pagan. The director further interferes with the original script by adding dialogue between Brigit and the beggar to whom she gives her father’s sword, where in the script this is covered more briefly in dialogue between the wicked pagan stepmother and the archdruid. In both cases I can see why she wanted to make those changes, but perhaps it would have gone better if she had allowed Lichtman-Fields to edit her changes in the intro at least.
Despite there being much of interest in the intro, for a moment I was left behind by the infodump. But things move along well from there.
There is not an awful lot more that I can say about the CD. I haven’t been to many plays or listened to them on radio or TV, so the slight formality of the speech is familiar, but not something I’m completely used to. I’m consequently not the right person to say how well it is done here. Suffice it to say that at first it threw me off a bit, but as the play went on I became more accustomed to it. I thought that the actors did a good job, all told.
To order the audio play:
California Artists Radio Theatre for CD or mp3: https://www.cartradio.com/brigid-of-kildare.html
Or order a download from Rakuten-Kobo, Scribd, Apple Books, and a whole lot of other places under the name “Brigid of Kildare: A Family Easter Program.”
[1] Nor of burning a perpetual flame, which is first mentioned over six centuries after Saint Brigit’s death, In Giraldus Cambrensis’s Topography of Ireland (ca. 1188).
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