Word: conchubar
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...bare outline of the legends: young Cuchulain, challenged by the warrior-Queen Aoife, defeats her in battle and that night begets a son by her. Years later, after taking an oath of allegiance to his king Conchubar, Cuchulain's son appears as a nameless young man who challenges Cuchulain at Conchubar's insistence, and is killed by his father. Learning the young man's identity, Cuchulain turns on Conchubar but is charmed into attacking the waves at the seashore instead. Finally, in his old age, weakened from loss of blood, Cuchulain meets Aoife again--who has come to kill...
BARNUM AND KNOX complement each others' strengths again as Conchubar and Cuchulain in On Baile's Strand, but this play uses the relationship of two lesser characters, the Blind Man and the Fool, to equal purpose in commenting on the progress of Cuchulain's life. Peter Wirth and Joel Davidson succeed only partially in filling these two roles with intelligent but unrealized interpretations. Director Donnally Miller emphasizes the mutual dependence of the two half-men well enough, but the scenes where they're alone, ideal for comic improvisation, drag more than they should...
...last of the three plays, On Baile's Strand, is a heroic tragedy based on a legend about Cuchulain, a sort of Irish Achilles. The legend fragment which the play dramatizes depicts warrior-king Cuchulain reluctantly submitting to the rule of the more civilized High King Conchubar, only to be forced into a battle in which he kills...
...only intelligence that exists for them is that of cunning or wise counsel in the art of war. The mind alone, the scholar, the academician, even the satirist is not mocked or belittled--he just does not exist. The play On Baile's Strand sees Cuchalain, the brave, and Conchubar, the wise, parodied by a fool and a blind beggar as a counterpoise. But Yeats is not laughing at his heroes; he is ironically presenting the extremes and tacitly assuming his ideal universal. For his poetry to hit the listener at full power, it must be completely accepted in this...
...best in On Baile's Strand, which sees the hero inadvertently murder his son, then go mad battling vainly against the sea. In this, the second of the four plays, Richard Eder is also outstanding as he crafty sightless man, who like Ireland's High King Conchubar both fears and mocks Cuchalain. Chris Beels plays the king. In this and also as the old man in At the Hawk's Well, both his speech and acting are intelligent interpretations of two characters who are despised, yet strangely accepted by Yeats...
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