SOURCE: Richards, Shaun. “Into That Rinsing Glare?: Field Day's Irish Tragedies.” Modern Drama 43, no. 1 (spring 2000): 109-19.

In the following essay, Richards compares and contrasts Paulin's Seize the Fire with Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, drawing attention to Paulin's portrayal of Prometheus as a revolutionary hero.

At a symposium named “Writers on Stage” (Peacock Theatre, Dublin, July 1997), Seamus Deane commented that while many contemporary Irish playwrights may refer to the political situation in works that “can have great emotional appeal,” they are still limited in that “they do not involve, or the manifestation of such feeling does not involve, an analysis of the power situation.” Deane used the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Stewart Parker's Pentecost (1987) as an example of his overall point that while such works may make audiences feel pity for the onstage victims of the political system, they do not inform them as to...