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.