Theatre review: Little substance to Gorky’s shadow in Abbey’s Children of the Sun

'Children of the Sun' has fine performances. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Emer O'Kelly

If the classic era of Irish drama is concerned with the revisionist view of the birth of our nation, the Russian equivalent concentrates on a frequently nostalgic examination of the time immediately prior to the wiping out of the old order.

Maxim Gorky’s 1905 ­Children of the Sun, written while in jail for his part in the abortive revolution of that year, is no exception. A co-production between Rough Magic and the Abbey, it has the eccentric patriarch ­Protasov, self-absorbed and even close to insanity, concentrating on his pseudo-scientific experiments on the nature of time while his beautiful wife Elena tries to keep life on an even keel for them and their sprawling household of what once has been an artists’ colony.