Two Yeats Plays

The Cat and the Moon and The Only Jealousy of Emer

By William Butler Yeats

The towering poet of the 20th century was also a great and innovative dramatist. Yeats drew upon Irish myth and the conventions of Japanese Noh drama to create plays that wove language, music, and spectacle into powerful narratives. In so doing, the critic Katherine Worth observed, Yeats “amazingly anticipated all that is most original in the European theatre.”

In The Cat and the Moon, a lame beggar and the blind beggar that carries him as a guide must choose whether to be healed or receive something greater in the distant future. In The Only Jealousy of Emer, the wife of a beloved warrior-king must choose whether to lose her husband to death or surrender something almost equally precious. In these plays, one comedic and the other tragic, a moment’s call to sacrifice and its conflicting pangs of desire are given startling, poignantly human treatment. New, live music and choreography was featured in a production directed by Sam McCready of the Belfast Lyric Theatre.

Two Yeats Plays was a “Pick of the Week” at nytheatre.com. The Review

Schedule

There were 15 performances from March 30 to April 15 at the Independent Theater on West 8th Street.

Cast

Ron Bopst*, David D’Agostini*, Marin Leggat, Jane C. Pejtersen, Brittany Pixton*, Javen Tanner*, Jjana Valentiner

* AEA Member. Equity Approved Showcase.

(This page is a summary of a past production. The full Yeats page as it existed during the run of this show, with calendar and images, can be found here.)