Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (by Sean O'Casey) waited nine years to reach New York, and then turned up off Broadway. Written long after O'Casey's lusty, naturalistic prime, it is streaked with fantasy and symbolism. Its man-sized crowing cock is everything that Ireland, for O'Casey, is not—life-loving, joyous, free. Against his feathered friend O'Casey sets all his inveterate foes—ignorant old windbags, bullying priests, superstition-clogged rustics, tightfisted employers. Above all, a tyrannic Puritanism blasts the temptations of the flesh, makes war on warmblooded temptresses.
With its scarifyingly freakish weather, eerie sounds and collapsing houses, Cock-a-Doodle Dandy...
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