Da (play)
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"Da" is a Tony-winning comedy by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. The play is largely autobiographical, and its protagonist, an expatriate writer named Charlie, represents Leonard himself. The play deals largely with Charlie's relationships with the two father figures in his life: "Da" (an old-fashioned Irish nickname meaning "Daddy" or "Papa"), his adoptive father, and Drumm, a cynical civil servant who becomes his mentor.
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[edit] Characters
Charlie, a middle-aged writer
Oliver, Charlie's childhood friend
Da, Charlie's recently deceased adoptive father
Mother, Charlie's long-deceased adoptive mother
Young Charlie, Charlie as a boy and as a young man
Drumm, Charlie's employer and mentor
Mary "The Yellow Peril" Tate, a young lady with a low reputation
Mrs. Prynne, Da's old employer
[edit] Setting
Initially, the play is set in Charlie's old home in Dalkey, County Dublin, in 1968. Later, there are numerous flashbacks to times and places remembered from Charlie's youth
[edit] Plot
Charlie, a writer who's been living in London for many years, returns to his boyhood home in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, after the death of his adoptive father. He finds that the house is filled with ghosts, of his parents and of his younger self.
Charlie talks and interacts with all the ghosts, relives important moments from his youth, and comes to grips with his complicated feelings for his adoptive parents. Through Charlie's conversations and interactions with the ghosts in his home, we see both why he loved his parents and why he was so eager to leave them far behind.
Charlie's family was not "dysfunctional," nor were his adoptive parents cruel or abusive. On the contrary, Charlie's parents adored him, and made great sacrifices to give him a good education. His Da, a gardener for a rich Anglo-Irish family, was a wonderful father in many respects: he was warm, kind, patient, imaginative and a masterful storyteller. At the same time, he was uneducated, ignorant of culture and the world at large, emotionally shallow, and woefully unsophisticated. Da required little from life, lacked all ambition, and seemed content to be an underpaid hireling forever. Charlie loved his adoptive father, but was also highly embarrassed by him, and felt a heavy sense of guilt over this embarrassment.
Further, Charlie was an illegitimate child at a time when this carried a heavy stigma in Catholic Ireland. Though Da accepted Charlie fully, Charlie always felt like an outsider in his family. Charlie often heard people suggest that, by taking in a bastard, his parents had done him a huge favor. Hence, while he loved his Da, he resented the sense of indebtedness he was expected to feel.
Moreover, because his Da was so emotionally shallow and wanted so little out of life, there was no way Charlie could ever hope to repay him, or even fully express love and gratitude.. Young Charlie's attempts to say, "I love you, Da" were accepted with a genial, nonchalant "Sure, and why wouldn't you?" And years later, the adult Charlie's attempts to care for his senescent Da were rebuffed. Charlie wanted to bring his elderly Da to live with him in England, but the old man preferred to sit and stare into his fireplace in his tiny home in Dalkey.
The genial, laid-back, undemanding Da was the polar opposite of Charlie's other father figure, Drumm. Da and Mother introduced teenage Charlie to Drumm in 1945. As a high-level civil servant, Drumm was one of the few educated and prosperous Irishmen Charlie's parents were acquainted with, and they hoped he could find a job for Charlie. During Drumm's meeting with Charlie and his family, Da made a series of stupid comments (Da seemed to think a German victory in World War 2 was imminent, and he was plainly rooting for this outcome) that humiliated Charlie and seemed to guarantee that Drumm would never give Charlie any kind of job. But afterward, Charlie met Drumm one on one, and found that Drumm had taken a liking to him.
Drumm was intelligent, shrewd and insightful. He was also deeply pessimistic and cynical. He was unhappily married and hated his own children, but saw Charlie as the son he never had, and offered Charlie hard-headed, unsentimental but valuable advice. In particular, Drumm urged Charlie to regard his Da as his enemy. Drumm actually liked Da and found him amusing, but he saw Da as a destructive influence on Charlie, as a man who'd hold his ambitious young son back from succeeding in life.
Drumm offered young Charlie his first job, a menial clerical position- but advised him to refuse it. Drumm saw that an intelligent, ambitious young man like Charlie had no future in Ireland, and would be wise to emigrate. Instead, Charlie took the clerical position, for 15 shillings a week (which seemed like a princely sum to a young man who'd grown up in poverty). He'd imagined the job would be only a temporary one, until he found fame and fortune. In reality, he worked for Drumm for nearly 14 years. In this regard, we see that Charlie was not as different from his Da as he wanted to believe. Like his Da, he became comfortable with an unprestigious, low-paying job, and kept this job far longer than he ever intended to.
In the late Fifties, as Charlie began to experience some success as a writer, he unthinkingly snubbed Drumm in public. Drumm turned against Charlie, and never spoke to him outside of the office again. About the same time, Da's employers, the Prynnes, sold their Irish home, leaving Da unemployed, and without so much as a pension. As a parting gift, the Prynnes gave Da an ugly, tacky conversation piece: a paperweight made from dozens of discarded eyeglasses. The unworldly, unambitious old man took the paperweight joyfully, treating it as a grand honor bestowed on him from a couple of "quality." To Charlie, this incident epitomized everything he disdained about his father, who was treated like dirt by his employers, but felt honored and privileged to receive a silly, worthless gift.
Soon after, Charlie moved to England with his fiancee. His adoptive mother died not long afterward, leaving Da alone in Dalkey. Charlie visited Da regularly, giving him a few pounds for spending money, and begging the old man to come live with him in England. Da always refused, which hurt Charlie more than the old man could have realized.
After Da's death, Charlie received a visit from Drumm, now an elderly man himself. Drumm still bore some ill will toward Charlie, despite the passage of time, but was compelled by duty to meet with Charlie. Shortly before his death, Da had given Drumm "Charlie's inheritance," and asked Drumm to make sure that Charlie received it. To Charlie's horror, the inheritance turned out to be two things he never wanted: the horrid paperweight made of eyeglasses, and an envelope containing all the spending money Charlie had ever given to his Da.
The infuriated Charlie was forced to accept that he had never been able to repay his father in even the slighest way, for the old man would never have dreamed of spending Charlie's money. In his own warped way, Da had adored Charlie, and wanted most of all to leave him some kind of bequest. The money and the paperweight made up Da's entire legacy, and he selflessly left it all to his son!
The maddened Charlie berated his father's ghost, and pledged to leave the house and Ireland forever, expressing his outrage that Da had never accepted any of Charlie's efforts to help him, and his grief that Da had refused to move to England with him. Touched by Charlie's grief, Da's genial ghost decided to make up for lost time, and come back to England with Charlie now!
As the play ends, we see the exasperated Charlie leaving his house, and his father's ghost following him amiably. It becomes clear that Charlie will never be able to elude the ghosts of his past, and that Da will always remain a powerful presence in Charlie's life, no matter how badly he wishes to forget the old man and leave him behind.
[edit] Trivia
Barnard Hughes played the title role in the original 1977 Broadway production, and won the Tony Award as Best Actor. He later starred with Martin Sheen in the 1988 movie adaptation.
The character of Drumm was inspired by a Mr. Mulligan, a civil servant who was young Hugh Leonard's boss at the Irish Land Commission for nearly fourteen years. Drumm would be the primary character in Leonard's later play, A Life.
