Almost every second person educated in an Irish primary school up to the 1970’s has woeful stories of brutality featuring a cane, a hard duster or the twisting of an ear. It’s a far cry from whiteboards, ‘Well Done Stars’ and ‘Good Effort Robert,’ irrespective of the achievement.

Pat McCabe’s The Dead School is set at that time in the 1970’s when the wheel began to turn; where the salvation of the person came through membership of a community of the faithful and through loyal service to the Holy Father and his bishops but where individualism and liberalism were beginning to emerge, threatening the old school.

McCabe adapted his novel some years ago for a Macnas outing and has rewritten it for this superb Livin’ Dred production, in association with Nomad Theatre Network. Directed by Padraic McIntyre with an ensemble cast of five, the vastness and colour of McCabe’s social and psychological drama is given full and proper treatment. The layers of McCabe’s examination of the clash between old and new schools are rendered in a wonderfully choreographed piece, where the actors seamlessly exchange roles for the many scenes. The performances are energetic, and the challenging scene and tone changes are convincingly achieved by the cast.

Leading the cast is Sean Campion as Raphael Bell who employs Malachy Dugeon (Eamon Owens) just out of training college, an appointment approved by Peter Daly’s meddlesome priest. Chalk-clad suit and tie meet bell-bottoms and the schoolroom will never be the same again.

Exquisitely captured in the character of Malachy and convincingly performed by Owens is the young idealistic graduate who sees the school as his oyster, a bright future where he will call the shots with his big new ideas and disregard for the old ways, but instead finds himself strangled in a system that he is ill prepared to change in any effective way. McCabe’s genius is in extolling the swing from right to left but showing that it can only work if executed by strong individuals with a mature sense of responsibility, poignantly brought to the fore in the well intentioned but ultimately weak Malachy.

As Raphael, Campion gives a heart rendering performance of a man personally traumatised by his own history and chained to that Ireland of the Eucharistic Congress that views the emerging liberalism represented by Malachy as bankrupt and immoral, leading to vices and temptations.

The portrayal of Malachy and Raphael Bell as emotionally tethered, tortured pigeons caught between two stools is succinctly focused and rapturously played by the actors; Malachy’s initial gung-ho attitude fades in the face of his inability to fasten his ideals to a responsible ethos while Raphael desperately tries to understand but fails to comprehend the changing structures of his world.

The portrayal of Malachy and Raphael Bell as emotionally tethered, tortured pigeons ... is succinctly focused and rapturously played by the actors.

Maree Kearns’ costume and set design magnificently portray the style, flavour and atmosphere of the era on a stage setting that depicts an untidy classroom with inkwell desks and the sad living room of Raphael Bell, with inventive pull out compartments to give context and sense to the characters’ private lives and their descent into madness: the childhood home of Malachy, a '70s gaudy hippy bed-sit, and a stark white asylum cell. Add Barry McKinney’s frenzied and alternating gloomy lighting and the production’s aesthetic emerges to skilfully consummate McCabe’s treatise on religious rot, societal mould and personal struggle.

McIntyre’s direction is very much in control of the story’s nuances; the humour, the pathos, the beauty and the grotesque of McCabe’s world are balanced well. The complexity of the story - which is as much about personal responsibility and personal tragedy as it is about social, political and religious mores - is pitched evenly. Ireland’s history in terms of its repression and liberation is represented by cameo-like background appearances and addresses from Oliver Cromwell and Daniel O’Connell.

McCabe is an expressive and graphic writer who contextualises the decay of his characters’ minds against their societal and familial backgrounds. The mastery of this production is a credit to McIntyre and the crew, who bring to embodiment the story of circumstances that sentence characters to doom.

Breda Shannon is a freelance writer and contributor of book reviews to The Irish Examiner.